The Terrace is the agency for strategy and communication on sustainability
At The Terrace we inspire and activate our clients to make better, more meaningful choices and guide them to make it happen.
Are you curious about the people that make our positive change happen? Are you interested in how The Terrace was founded? Or are you perhaps looking for a vacancy? Then you’ve arrived at the right page!
OUR TEAM
Mother Nature
At The Terrace, Mother Nature is calling the shots. For a healthy future of our planet, it is essential we make decisions based on long-term thinking. Our CEO, Mother Nature, is not bound by short-term human thinking. She makes decisions with - at least - the next five generations in mind. Together with her, we challenge our clients to ask themselves: what is the most beautiful thing your organization/brand can do?
Leontine Gast
Leontine founded The Terrace in 2007 with the vision to help companies make positive impact. She has a proven track record working with more than 145 customers in the field of sustainability and helped brands and companies become more future proof. Her experience covers many different sectors, like food, fashion to finance. Leontine is an inspiring professional with a big heart for purpose and making the world a little more beautiful.
Pierre Hupperts
As a sociologist with a strong economic background, Pierre has more than 30 years of experience in CSR and sustainable supply chain management. He is the former director of The Body Shop Benelux and campaign leader at Oxfam Novib, Latin America. A talented visionary with a good understanding of the macro-economic context, mining and international supply chains. Pierre brings convincing skills to bring together people and organisations from different sectors.
Gerno Kwaks
Gerno has a keen eye for human rights and other sustainability issues in an international context. He has extensive experience as a manager of research and lobbying programs at international organizations. He is one of the inventors of Fairphone and was involved in several multi-stakeholder initiatives worldwide. He now uses this experience to make sustainability issues manageable in order to find solutions together.
Liliane van Heteren
Liliane has 25 years of experience working at Albert Heijn, the largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands. During the last 9 years as Sustainability Manager, she gained experience in key topics such as food waste, animal welfare, package reduction and sustainable procurement. At The Terrace, with her hands on mentality, strong stakeholder management and team player credentials, Liliane can use her breadth of experience and passion to help companies achieve their positive change step by step.
Eva Schouten
Eva has built up a strong knowledge of effective sustainability strategies and has previously worked for retailers, producers, NGOs and multi-stakeholder initiatives in multiple sectors. She worked in the cocoa and cotton sector on sustainability and transparency. Her focus is on developing unique and promising propositions for companies to engage with sustainability. In addition, she is always motivated to simplify the complex and convert a clients’ sustainability strategy into an approach that connects stakeholders.
Isabel Bos
Isabel has an academic background in environmental science and business. She is a pragmatic sustainability enthusiast with professional experience in retail, renewable energy and e-mobility. Her skills are in stakeholder management, reporting, strategy and project management. Isabel uses her analytical and strategic insight to make the complex simple and replace client problems with engaging tailormade solutions.
Maurits de Munck
Maurits has a solid academic background in Law and Economics combined with practical sustainability experience. Amongst others, he has worked with governments, NGOs, producers and startups on sustainable business cases, circular policy tools and climate cases. Through his expertise on circular economy, sustainability strategy and B Corp certifications, he focuses on turning constructive insights and creativity into sustainable impact. By doing so, he aims to make maximum positive change happen.
Luca Goossens
After completing her master's degree in communication and journalism, Luca worked as a journalist for a number of years. She also created content for brands such as KPN. Thanks to her experience in the media, she knows exactly how to tell an engaging story. She decided to dedicate her experience as a researcher and storyteller to create positive change in brands and companies. She is motivated to (re)think corporate sustainability strategies and translate these into activating communication approaches.
Ralph Kruijssen
Ralph has more than 20 years of experience in bringing sustainability to life through communication. With his experience as an award-winning art director at international advertising agencies, Ralph helps good brands become big and big brands become good. He believes good communication is all about branding and activation: distinctive branding ensures you are recognizable and stand out from the crowd. Through activation, brands not only express what they stand for, but challenge their audience to participate and become part of a movement.
Lucinda Singer
Lucinda has both a BA and M.Sc in Political Science. She focused her studies on Global Environmental Governance, Green Policies and Sustainability. In her professional career, Lucinda has worked in digital marketing where she developed her skills in communications. Whilst also advocating for green policies and practices internally. As an enthusiastic sustainability go-getter. Lucinda is combining her passion for climate activism with her skill of storytelling, to kickstart her career in creating positive change.
Romee Lasschuijt
Romee has an educational background in consumer behaviour specifically food and sustainability. During her study, she developed an interest in sensory science, exploring the use of triggers for sustainable and healthy behaviour. After graduation, she did extensive research on current and future food and sustainability trends. With this knowledge and expertise, she wants to guide companies in their transformation to becoming future-proof with healthy and sustainable products that consumers actually want to buy.
Trisha Goossens
Trisha believes that change is definitely possible. It's not always easy and sometimes things don't go as planned or expected, but the road to get there also brings you knowledge, experiences, and insight. This applies to consumers, and certainly to organizations, large and small. Before joining The Terrace, she spent nine years as an editorial coordinator at OneWorld, a magazine that focuses on sustainability, human rights and inequality in a journalistic way. Now she wants to contribute to making organizations more sustainable from within.
Zita
Zita is doubtlessly one of our most popular team members. Her presence results in our clients often suggesting: "Let's meet at your office instead of ours.".
OUR STORY
The future needs all of our brains, hearts and hands
What characterizes The Terrace is our desire to make the world future proof; our intrinsic motivation to always be experts on the topic; our analytical ability to make the complex simple; and our creativity to develop innovative solutions.
To date, we have worked for over 115 clients. Ranging from multinationals to scale-ups and non-profit organisations. Sometimes our assignments last two months; some clients stay with us for years. And lots of clients come back for more!
More than just an advisor, our clients describe us as a true sparring partner in their CSR journey. We co-create, we support what is already there and we build trust in relationships. You can count on us to challenge the status quo to create a better business!
The Terrace was born out of impatience
Leontine Gast became the first CSR manager at the food retailer Albert Heijn. With the launch of the organic label AH Biologisch she proved to be a true pioneer in making sustainable products more mainstream.
After a nine-year journey at Albert Heijn, it was clear that making sustainable impact was a lengthy process. Leontine became impatient. She wanted to make more positive change – and faster, too. That’s why, in 2007, she created The Terrace with the ambition to help companies with their CSR challenges.
We became who we are with the help of a Thai restaurant
Pierre Hupperts joined The Terrace in 2011 as partner. He and Leontine met each other way before in the 1990s at the Social Venture Network. Since their first encounter they shared a Thai dinner at least once a year at Birdies on the Zeedijk. Their differences in personality and background combined with their joint ambition to drive businesses to be a force for good proved to be a great combination that led to fruitful results.
With the arrival of Pierre, our team and range of services expanded. Next to brand positioning and communication, we started offering more sustainability & strategy consultancy and stakeholder dialogues. A green heart connecting everything.
OUR CLIENTS
JOIN OUR TEAM
Our dynamic team is made up by a group of diverse people with different backgrounds and a shared ambition to make positive impact. Interested in joining our team?
Click the button below to check our vacancies.