Ekon's Idols (Part 9)

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Marijke van der Maan
"Marijke" – Born in Amsterdam, Netherlands
Collaborator for my nonprofit Project Teide

The last mentor to highlight in this series is Marijke van der Maan.  Marijke helps me with my outreach work, and she has taken quite the interesting journey to get here.

When she was younger, Marijke was a semi-professional cyclist for Noorderlicht Racing in the Netherlands.  She was the team’s gravel and climbing specialist, never the flashiest cyclist in the peloton but always a surprise competitor on the long relentless climbs that the rest of the field dreaded.  She wasn’t at the level where cycling could become her sole source of income, so she also worked as a professional civil engineer.  The Netherlands relies on substantial water management infrastructure to reduce flood risk across the low-lying country, and Marijke worked for years reinforcing dikes, upgrading flood defenses, and extending water systems in service of that battle.  She knew these projects were important for the safety of her community, and she respected the ingenuity of Dutch flood control, but over the years she grew weary of the repetition of these projects.  The work became stale and uninspiring.  She also felt the projects lacked long-term thinking, each flood intervention eventually losing its fight with nature.  Her colleagues seemed to believe that engineering could permanently fix any environmental threat, but Marijke saw through that illusion.

Beyond just desiring something new, Marijke also had reservations about the positive impact of her work.  Her managers tended to assume that all of their technically successful projects were automatically socially successful ones, too, but these expensive projects drove up living costs and often displaced the people living near them.  Marijke shifted her focus toward urban planning and public policy.  This is how she found her way to me and Project Teide at the intersection of immigration, education, and geosciences.  She supports the mission indirectly by representing immigration and environmental issues on urban planning committees, making sure new projects consider all types of people and prioritize sustainability when possible.  Marijke is particularly good at identifying the unintentional consequences of well-meaning plans, and she is not easily convinced by glossy presentations or over-ambitious promises by upper level executives.  She channels her grit from cycling into fighting for people who might otherwise be overlooked.

As I have gotten to know Marijke better, I have learned that her mantra for life is “pass it on”, always intending to repay kindness to the people in her life.  She credits this mindset to the abundant support she received when rehabilitating from a near-death cycling accident.  During a major gravel race in south Limburg seven years ago, Marijke suffered a catastrophic crash on a fast descent.  Gravel riding in the mountains requires patience, discipline, and focus – especially when descending – but a combination of high speed, loose terrain, and poor visibility sent her off the road.  These conditions would have been harrowing even for the best cyclist.  Marijke’s injuries were severe enough that her physical recovery was questionable for some time.  During her lengthy rehabilitation, she depended on her support network in ways she had never imagined and never desired, she admitted to me, but her friends and family always helped her out while expecting nothing in return.  Through this generosity, she came to understand that most people step up to help each other when the time requires it.  I know I should apply this same philosophy in supporting my football teammates on and off the field.

In her spare time, Marijke also makes and sells homemade hot sauces… for some reason (I never asked why).  She sets up shop at local markets and has a small circle of devoted customers that swing by when their supplies run low.  My personal favorite flavor is “Dike Breaker”, an intense sauce with slow-building heat that is smoky and fruity.  Throughout the year, she also sends me free samples of all her flavors, which I share with my Cairo City teammates at our team dinners.  It has even gotten to the point where they just call Marijke the “hot sauce lady”.  I haven’t told the guys yet, but she has been working hard in the lab to perfect a new flavor dedicated to the team, which she considers some of her biggest fans.  Here’s to hoping Cairo has a minor league promotion to celebrate where we can unveil the flavor in high spirits!

[Moka26]

If we both manage to get promoted, I'd want to work on some marketing campaigns for that new sauce flavor (if my workload stays light)...