Interview Fiona van der Burgt

Laying a solid foundation

This year, Weather Impact celebrates its 10-year anniversary! To mark the occasion, we reflect on the last ten years and speak to both former and current colleagues who helped shape the company into what it is today.

This week, we catch up with Fiona van der Burgt, a key contributor to Weather Impact’s early success and now an entrepreneur in her own right. Fiona played a crucial role in Weather Impact’s early development.

An exciting start

My role at Weather Impact was my first real job after university. It was not a gradual start – within days of my hiring, I was sent to Ethiopia for a project. I couldn’t have asked for a more exciting beginning!

Since then, I have been to Ethiopia many times for the same project, but I’ve also had the opportunity to work in other countries, such as Kenya, Tanzania and Myanmar. I cherish each of those trips and experiences, especially my time in Africa.

We worked hard to build our services and partnerships, collaborating closely with the National Meteorological Institutes. We had to work especially hard in Ethiopia, where the political situation poses its own challenges to continuing such services in a sustainable way.

Team building

The team at the time played a crucial role in the company’s success. Gerrit Hiemstra, our co-founder, was the connecting link with new relations and acquisitions. Meanwhile, Arnold Lobbrecht was involved in building our team and coaching employees, using his experience of leading HydroLogic for 15 years.

Since we shared an office space with HydroLogic, we were closely connected to the its employees. We often had lunch together and enjoyed lots of fun social activities. I still remember the New Year’s dinners at Arnold’s place and later at Stefan’s place. I fondly look back at the forest climbing, cycling dinners, canoeing trips, dance parties, and cooking workshops. Those were fun times.

All hands on deck

Saskia, who joined Weather Impact before me, was the manager and business developer. We spent many hours brainstorming about how we would shape our business model and how we were going to bring our much-needed services into the market.

We made key investments, like purchasing our own server, so we could do our programme work freely. We also hired more people and strengthened our technical capacity.

My role was diverse and hands-on: I handled data analysis, programming, project consulting, worked on our website, wrote news items, prepared promotional material and presentations for meetings with potential clients. Eventually, I started writing proposals too.

At first, we focussed on the financial sector, banks, and insurance companies to make them more resilient to the changing climate. But when the G4AW program launched, we realised that such projects were the type of work we were good at. We then began partnering with bigger agri and telecom organisations in Africa, although this came with its own set of challenges.

A valuable experience

I worked at Weather Impact for five years. In that time, I watched the company grow into an independent organisation with its own identity and culture. It was incredibly rewarding to have the freedom to help shape a small company and be involved in every aspect of its operations.

Now that I have started my own company, I realise just how much my experience at Weather Impact has helped me. I look back at my time at Weather Impact with a big smile – it was a role that gave so much, both professionally and personally.