David Verboom

CEO

As a leader of humanitarian organisations, David Verboom’s career has been shaped by some of the world’s largest crises. For more than 25 years his work has taken him across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East Region, responding to conflict, natural disasters, and the flight of refugees.

David began his humanitarian career in Kenya and South Sudan with Medair, a Swiss humanitarian organization. Over the next 16 years ,he led teams with international NGOs as well as the European Commission where he was involved in monitoring the work of partner organisations.

Returning to Medair as Chief Executive Officer in 2018, David was pleased to find the same core values and commitment to emergency response. Today, Medair has a programme portfolio of 90 million $, a global team of 1700 staff, and reaches more than 3 million people annually. 

David and his wife Inge Wessels have three teenage children and currently live in Lausanne Switzerland.

Talk - Agile Leadership: When Lives Depend on It

David is the CEO of Medair, an impartial, independent, and neutral humanitarian organisation, which mission is to save lives and relieve human suffering in the world’s most difficult-to-reach and devastated places. Saving lives in those war torn places requires an organisation to balance security of their staff, with flexibility and agility to save lives.

In this keynote, David will look at the balancing act of agile leadership, namely how can we meet the flexibility, innovation, speed and quick response requirements from our chaotic world, while we at the same time maintain a healthy organisational culture of stability, rest, balance and value based lifestyle.