ALUMNI INTERVIEW NEWS STIJN FROM OTTEN RSM
potential for electric vehicles, and feeling I’m doing something worthwhile is good for my motivation.” While tireless Stijn is focused on Remotion, he still finds time for other causes. Last year he was part of the BKB Academy, a PR company that selects around 25 young people with high potential and teaches them about campaigning and raising public awareness. Each year they head somewhere there’s an imminent election. “We visited Israel for two weeks,” he says. “One week we focused on the election; the other on the Palestinian conflict.” Stijn is also setting up a European umbrella organisation (the European Youth Climate Movement), coordinating DNYC’s sustainability taskforce, and is currently active in the Young Club Of Rome. He freely admits his time at RSM played a pivotal role in all this. “Studying at RSM creates a broader perspective. I look at other GBSM alumni and they have varied jobs, but all share the same sense of wanting to do good. The course gave us the motivation to work hard for good causes,” he says. “Of course, it helps that we had really dedicated professors who taught us very well.”
RSM OUTLOOK SUMMER 2010
Daniel Fernandes (iwill.rsm.nl/dfernandes), Brazilian PhD Candidate
the normal way, adding a word here or there to any agreement. Instead we had the chance to walk up to Chancellor Merkel, President Sarkozy, even President Obama, and to shake their hands and say: ‘We are the young people – don’t mess up’.” Predictably perhaps, those world leaders did fail to reach a binding agreement. “All this political power was in Copenhagen, but almost nothing came of it,” Stijn says. “It was hard not to be disillusioned.” It inspired him to become more commercial, and find a way of making money from doing something worthwhile. And the answer also lay in Copenhagen. “A hundred electric scooters made the journey from the Netherlands. One of Remotion’s partners led them part of the way in his electric car. We got talking and he said: ‘Why not work with us?’ “He said I wouldn’t earn much for the first three months, then after that they would see,” he continues. “So despite my father’s advice, I chose instability.” Since then Otten has not had one second of doubt. “I work with a smart young team. We deliberately choose people who aren’t from within the auto industry, because we want them to think outside the box. There’s huge
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