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Our Team
QRP International has achieved great success due in no small part to the dedication, knowledge and expertise of its staff. In any industry, the people behind a company are as important as the company itself. QRP International is blessed to have such energetic and customer-driven individuals.
Jacobus Groot
Managing Director
Jacobus was born in the Netherlands in 1969. He studied Tourism in Breda and International Management at the University of Maastricht. After his graduation he started a career in Project Management in various telecommunications companies. Being passionate about international management he worked in Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Germany , Cyprus, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Through his various experiences he wanted to improve project management, facilitating change.
In 2003 he started his long time dream to have his own company and founded QRP International which quickly grew to a Pan – European leader in Project Management training and consultancy.
Jacobus loves travelling, speaks Dutch, English ,German, Italian and some French. Wine and good food are his passion which he enjoys in his home town Como in Italy. In his free time he bikes around lake Como and plays Football. Jacobus is married and has 3 children.
Michelangelo Carbone
COO
Freshly graduated into business administration at European School of Economics in Bari, Michelangelo joined QRP in July 2004 as an intern in charge of doing market research for the Italian market, the company was then made of 2 persons: Jacobus and He. QRP activities increased quickly at an international level and he soon became in charge of finance and operation, ensuring that business operations are efficient and effective, planning, scheduling and controlling all QRP services provided worldwide.
As QRP’s senior team members, Michelangelo is a reference and a guide for the whole team, always ready to answer to our (numerous!) questions, with patience and great understanding. Michelangelo is also an expert problem solver. We haven’t met a problem he can’t untangle. A man of few words, when he does speak up, we all listen. But don’t let him fool you. Just under the surface, Michelangelo harbors a wicked sense of humor.
Outside the office, as a father of three sons, Michelangelo keeps pretty busy with his family life and his passion for reading.
Maarten Dauwe
Business Development Manager Belgium
After obtaining his Master in Economics from the Ehsal Management School in Brussels, Maarten went to work at Belfius, a bank company, where he was in charge of guiding private clients in their key investment decisions. This extensive experience (>5 years) created a real customer-centric focus in his present business approach and brings an interesting flair to QRP.
Maarten joined us in July 2010 as Business Development Manager in order to create and increase the satisfaction & happiness of the Belgium and Luxembourg customers. Maarten brought to the QRP Team and QRP Clients the perfect combination of clients focus and problem solving spirit as he is PRINCE2 and MSP certified himself.
When he is not working, his hobbies include his family, sports, reading, writing and enjoying Belgium beer with friends.
Noor Bouwdewijn
Marketing Executive Belgium
Originally from the Netherlands, Noor graduated from Wageningen University with a degree in Nutrition & Health. Due to her enormous passion for food, she soon found a job at a food start up. She discovered that working at a startup obliges you to take on many responsibilities and be very versatile. It taught her many lessons, but most of it all it helped her discover her passion for (online) marketing and content creation.
Her professional journey took her past some other startups and scale-ups before she decided to settle in Milan. After the big move to Italy, she joined the QRP team as a marketing executive for the Belgian market.
Noor is passionate about different languages and cultures and spent a year in Russia to discover the country. She now uses this curiosity to explore all that Italy has to offer, from North to South. In her free time you will probably find Noor with her family, food shopping or cooking some challenging recipe. Noor also loves to be out in nature, be creative with her sewing machine or read a good book!
Jorien Hettinga
Sales Executive Belgium
Born and raised among the cows in the Northern province of The Netherlands, Jorien moved to the student city of Wageningen for her degree in Management, Economics and Consumer Studies. After working for a few years as an analyst in the backoffice of BNP Paribas, Jorien and her partner took a leap of faith looking for a new challenge in the region of Milan.
With her people-oriented mindset, she joined QRP in 2022 as a Sales Executive for Belgium. Her natural feeling for understanding the needs and desires of colleagues and clients, guides her in being the ultimate go-between in this position.
Being a humble Dutchie, she finds joy in the simple things in life. You’ll find her enjoying nature, either in hiking boots or on skis, watching football matches and occasionally strumming on her guitar. And having moved to Italy recently, she can’t help but accommodate to la dolce vita, with good food and local wines included.
Seif-Eddine Kara
Sales Executive Belgium
Originally from Algeria, born and raised between the Mediterranean sea and the mountains, Seif-Eddin has a Master and PhD in process engineering from University of Blida, Algeria.
After his Master degree and as passionate about cars and sport cars he started working at Renault Automotive – sport cars department in quality of sales manager.
As a person, he loves challenges and big achievements. He decided to start a PhD in Engineering.
Getting a PhD allowed him to work and collaborate with a lot of scientific groups from all over the world and this work brought him to settle in Italy. While he was working on research he struggled a lot with respecting project deadlines due to the enormous work till he started using best practices project management, where he discovered the importance of project management and how best practice makes the work easy.
As a father of two beautiful daughters and a wonderful wife in his free time Seif love being with his family, especially around the food table. He likes sports: football since he was a player, mechanical sport because there is a lot of engineering and strategy around, especially F1. Reading real success stories is also one of his favorite hobby.
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Ricky Boeykens
Trainer and Consultant
Ricky was born in Belgium, the land of chocolate and beer, and graduated in Economics as a professional Bachelor. Having seen too many figures while studying, he decided to limit them just to the one’s and zero’s and became highly interested in Informatics.
He became a Microsoft Certified System Engineer on Windows 2003 and wanted to share knowledge as much as possible with Microsoft Certified Trainer as the logical next step. Meanwhile he came in contact with the upcoming IT Service Management (ITIL V2) trend in Belgium and decided to leave the technical IT world for “A Brave New world”, and the nickname “Rickitil” has been born.
Training and consultancy to many different types of companies, small to big sized, national to international an last but not least IT and non-IT, became his habitat. The combination of all these environments and technical background made him a very flexible and trusted expert in ITIL with a lot of real life experience.
Sports (Tennis, Football), Bruce Sprinsgteen, italian food, and most of all his family are filling the rest of his time.
Chiara Orsenigo
Service Manager
Chiara graduated from the University of Study Milan-Bicocca with a Bachelor’s degree in Science of Tourism and Local Community in November 2013.
After that, Chiara was in charge as customer and partner care in an Online Travel Agency in Milan until November 2015, when she decided to leave Italy and stayed for nearly one year in England at the beginning for an English Course and after like a volunteer in a Youth Hostel.
After this experience, she started to work like a receptionist in a 5 stars’ hotel by the Lake Como until the beginning of November 2016.
All these experiences enriched her cultural and professional knowledge, making her the perfect candidate for the Office Assistant role in 2017.
From January 2023 Chiara is Service Manager, making sure that services are being seamlessly delivered to our clients.
As you can figure out from her studies, tourism, travel and geography are her favourite passions. She has a lot of hobbies as well, besides music and cooking, she has been playing Volleyball since she was a child.
Renato Passalacqua
Finance Manager
Born in Naples and raised in Rome, Renato graduated from University of Rome La Sapienza with a bachelor degree in International Economics and a Master’s degree in International Management and Business. Having acquired relevant experience in the international finance and cash flow management, Renato found his way in Como at QRP International as Finance Assistant, in June 2018.
From January 2021 he runs the Finance department and his growing team as Finance Manager for the whole QRP group.
Thanks to his international and finance experience, combined with his quick thinking and analytic skills, Renato is a good guide through the complex world of international invoicing, cash flow management and financial forecasting.
Renato has a huge passion for videogames, books, tabletop games and cooking (especially chinese and japanese). In his spare time he tries to fulfill all of these passions, along with managing his extremely energetic dog Tuuli.
Alessandra Morciano
Marketing Manager
Alessandra graduated from Sapienza University of Rome with a Master’s degree in Business Economics and got a job fresh out of school as an intern in Etnocom, an advertising agency specialised in ethnic strategies. After the internship, she found an opportunity for an European Voluntary Service in Croatia where she was in charge of promoting projects and visibility of the organization through social networks, writing articles for the blog and facilitating events.
If you combined those skills with her willingness, curiosity, creativity and positive attitude, Alessandra was for sure the best candidate for the role of Marketing Executive for the QRP Italian market in 2016.
From January 2023 Alessandra is Marketing Manager, overseeing the department’s operations and providing guidance and feedback to other marketing executives.
In her free time, Alessandra loves reading and practicing & teaching yoga.
Justyna Ptasznik
Accreditation and Compliance Specialist
After obtaining her Master in Pedagogy at The Maria Grzegorzewska University in Warsaw, she worked in international elementary schools in Warsaw, London and Frankfurt. She joined our team in February 2013 as country manager for the Polish market and was in charge of all the sales and marketing activities for Poland. Unfortunately in 2016 QRP has to take the difficult decision of leaving the Polish market to focus on its main countries, however we could not leave Justyna as she was a great asset for QRP! Justyna learned about the office and administration manager position at QRP.
It was clear that she had the right competences for the position: she is naturally thorough, hard worker, steady and reliable, and she’s been mastering our office ever since, helping Michelangelo to keep the books, monitoring and delivering training material and examination worldwide.
From 2023 her main focus is on maintaining the excellent standard as well as ensuring that the company follows its defined internal policies and procedure, and as well is responsible for ensuring external compliance related to all accreditations of QRP.
In her spare time, Justyna is most likely hanging with her family or cycling.
Laurent Louboutin
E-Learning Developer
Laurent was born in Brittany, France and graduated in History and Politics at Rennes II University. He moved to the United Kingdom where he started his career as IT support on IBM service desk. Thanks to a keen interest for project management, he moved to Royal Dutch Shell IT project management team where he certified as an ITIL expert and Prince2 practitioner. He taught these two topics for four years at QRP and later gained experience in Cloud technologies and eLearning development at Oracle. Laurent returned to QRP in 2021 to develop our digital offering.
Outside of work he enjoys reading, running, spending time with family and Qi Gong meditation.