We’re happy to welcome a new team member! Since a couple of weeks, Elise Van der Stichelen joined the Victoris team as a part-time Communication Manager.
Elise was a first class sports management student at the Department of Movement and Sports Management. She will support our communication actions, meaning the planning and creation of blogs, social media content and newsletters, and help with organizing events.
In combination with both similar and slightly other activities for the SportUp and SportKompas project, this results in a full-time employment in the sports technology and innovation domain.
Elise: “I’m happy to still have a connection with the sports department of Ghent University. I did research for my thesis in the biomechanics group at the Sport Science Laboratory – Jacques Rogge, so it’s very interesting to be able to follow all the studies regarding sports tech, health, physical activity, nutrition, etc.”
“Doing the marketing part of Victoris makes me eager to learn more about a good marketing and communication strategy, all kinds of innovative channels, creating valuable content and converting important analytics to keep on improving ourself as an organization. It’s an exciting and challenging time for me as I try to develop myself as much as I can and be of added value to the great team I’m working with. I’m learning a lot from them on many different levels so I’m very grateful for this amazing opportunity.”
Elise is mainly working together with business developer Kristof De Mey and innovation manager Bruno D’Hulster.
Bruno already joined the team in 2019 and is mainly supporting our researchers in setting up digital product development and innovation projects. He is involved in projects such as Muscle Talent Scan, Lower Impact Runner and many smaller (often confidential) projects in our groups.
Bruno is a social entrepreneur with more than 25 years of experience in digital transformations, management consulting and innovation. In the past, he has studied electronic engineering at Ghent University. In 2006 he founded the consulting company BeAligned and accompanied different spinoffs an startups. After working 11 years as a consultant in many companies and different sectors, he decided to switch his energy towards societal projects mainly in the sports sector.
Bruno: “There is still a huge job to be done in digitalization and innovation in the sports sector, with a big challenge in sports recreation, sports education at schools and in sport clubs. A specific challenge is to increase sports participation for disadvantaged groups in our society. Sport is an enabler for social integration, creating self-esteem and developing a healthy life style. Therefore it is so important to invest in movement and sports during childhood”.
Besides his activity at Ghent University, Bruno has founded Sportamundi, a non-profit organization bringing sports science into practice in a non-commercial setting (schools, federations, cities, etc.). The main project he is coordinating is called SportKompas, a sport orientation tool for children to find out which sport they have most talent for and (would) like to do most.
His driver is to implement smart products in the non-profit sector, based on scientific evidence with new funding mechanisms. In this context, he wants to make innovation happen. His experience in technology, management consulting, entrepreneurship and startups makes him a very complementary team member at Victoris!
Just as Elise, Bruno is also involved in the sports startup acceleration programs of SportUp, a project we run in collaboration with Sport Vlaanderen and imec.istart.
If you want to reach out to Elise, you can contact her at Elise.vanderstichelen@ugent.be. If you want to get in touch with Bruno: Bruno.Dhulster@ugent.be.
