• Martine was the Director of hera from 1995 until 2021

• Martine continues to support hera projects and the hera office with coordination, quality review, organisation and management issues.

• She has an academic background in Anthropology and Archaeology and obtained a Master in Public Administration. She is an expert in NGO programming.

• Martine is a member of the Board of Directors of the NGO Light for the World International and of Light for the World Belgium, a European confederation of national development NGOs committed to saving eyesight, improving the quality of lives and advocating for the rights of persons with disabilities.

• For more than ten years, she worked as an independent consultant on behalf of the Belgian Development Cooperation for the review of the NGO 5 year programs and annual action plans.

• She was a member of the Development Cooperation Task Force on harmonization of the annual evaluation of program documents of 85 NGO's.

• From 1999 to 2004, she was President of the NGO Advisory Board which acts as a direct advisor to the Minister of Development Cooperation in Belgium and to the various parties involved with Development Cooperation.

• Following that, Martine was president of Coprogram (2006-2009), the federation of Flemish and bilingual non-governmental organizations for development cooperation in Belgium.

• From 2005 to 2009 Martine was also chair of Be-Cause Health (2005 to 2009), a pluralistic platform committed to the right to health for all.

• She set up a consultancy company HESTIA in charge of the cultural and psychological wellbeing of expatriate families and was awarded Young Entrepreneur from the Royal Baldwin Foundation in 1998.

• Martine worked as a scientific coordinator in the EC DG Research for Developing Countries. She was in charge of the Identification of Scientific Networks, preparation and presentation of EC's programme in workshops, seminars and international conferences; identification of experts in the field of Medicine, Health Services and Nutrition.

• Her field experience is mainly in Southern Africa. She was Regional Coordinator for a Belgian Health NGO based in Zimbabwe covering also Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Zambia and Namibia.

Contact info: Martine.Vandermeulen@hera.eu