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As of 1 May 2022, Marieke van der Plas will be the new executive director of Rutgers, the Netherlands Centre on Sexuality. Marieke van der Plas will succeed Ton Coenen. Ton, who has been with Rutgers for six years, started as director of GGD GHOR Nederland – a Dutch organisation for public health and safety – in January.
Marieke van der Plas was the director of the Royal Dutch Gymnastics Union (KNGU) since 2017. Before that, she was the owner of a consultancy firm in the Caribbean and worked among others for CAOP (knowledge and service centre for labour matters in the public domain). She is also a member of the Supervisory Board of Kinderopvang 2Samen and a board member of Waarborgfonds Sport.
Marieke van der Plas was originally an educationalist. She looks forward to working for Rutgers and Dance4Life. “Enjoying sex and intimacy makes people healthy and happy. But unfortunately, this is not always the case. Around the world, young people face barriers to accessing good sexuality education, contraception and safe abortion. People are not always free to be who they want to be. Sexual and gender-based violence remains a prevalent human rights violation. We still have a lot of work to do in the Netherlands and abroad.”
“The people at Rutgers and Dance4Life have a lot of knowledge, skills and ambition to work on these issues. I can’t wait to join them in their mission”
Mirjam de Blécourt, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Rutgers, is looking forward to working with Marieke: “We are extremely happy that Marieke is going to work as the new director at Rutgers. Together we will work on the improvement of sexual rights, access to education and information about sexuality, access to contraception and safe abortion and prevention of sexual and gender-based violence.”
