Jeroen van der Sommen is the co-founder and managing director at Akvo, an organization seeking to revamp and disrupt development aid through data and digitalization. He started his career as a hydrogeologist in Burkina Faso in 1982 and holds a master’s degree in Hydrology from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Throughout the 1980s, he worked and lived in Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Niger, Mali, Indonesia, and India, managing water supply and management projects on behalf of organizations such as the World Bank and the European Union. In 1998, he founded the Netherlands Water Partnership, where he built a dynamic network of over 200 member organizations. Today, he is the driving force behind Akvo’s strategy in West Africa.