Joost Oorthuizen is general Director of the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH), a government funded organization that is accelerating and up scaling sustainable trade through public private partnerships. Joost Oorthuizen worked as senior consultant with Twynstra Gudde in which he guided multinational companies, governments and civil society organisations in establishing innovative partnerships. Before that he worked for Agri-Profocus where he set up alliances for agricultural value chains in developing countries. Joost Oorthuizen has extensive business consultancy experience in Asia, Africa and the Netherlands, working for retail, SMEs, the creative industry and the public sector. He gained expertise in alliance-management of large-scale public-private companies and also facilitated alliances and large scale business projects in diverse agricultural supply chains. In 2003, Joost got his PhD at Wageningen University on large-scale water management in the Philippines, after which he took a postgraduate training on change management at the SIOO.