New Silk Roads supports impact-driven organisations and businesses through program development, financial resilience, digital strategy, futures thinking, and monitoring, evaluation and learning

Evert Faber van der Meulen is an institutional fundraiser with 10+ years of experience in programme development, proposal writing, and consortium building. Over the years, he has raised tens of millions for a variety of projects. He also designs and conducts training in fundraising, Theory of Change development, Monitoring and Evaluation. His areas of expertise include entrepreneurship and job creation, arts and culture, and media and civil society.

Evert is Director at New Silk Roads. He holds an Mphil in Islamic Studies and History from Oxford University, an MA in European Union Studies, and a BA in History (Leiden University). He has been a lecturer on the external relations of the EU at Leiden University. He loves nothing more than to flaunt his knowledge of remarkable facts about Islamic history, and get into arguments about German philosophers and Sufi mystics. Evert currently divides his time between living in the Netherlands and Tunisia.

Katie Bentivoglio is a project manager with New Silk Roads. She has over a decade's of experience working at the intersections of social impact, community building, and creative expression in the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. She has a strong background in international development, ecosystem building, strategic communications, and creative industries, as well as in developing and launching new initiatives across disciplines and geographies. Her interests include imagining futures, creating unexpected collaborations, and beautifully proofread documents.

Katie holds a Masters of Science in Development Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a dual Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Middle Eastern, Asian, and African Studies from Columbia University. She was selected for the Junior Fellows program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Presidential Associate Program at the American University in Cairo. She was also a three-time recipient of the Critical Language Scholarship for Arabic studies.

Born and raised in San Francisco, Katie has called a number of places home, including New York, Cairo, London, and Tunis. You can usually find Katie living somewhere along the Mediterranean, brushing up on obscure grammar, or jumping into the sea.

Ines has been exploring the fields of Non-Formal Education and Social Development as an instructional designer and facilitator since 2013. She’s worked for over 10 years in various Egyptian non-governmental organizations, experimenting with and observing the various ways art can be used in Education, but also how people learn in general. For the past few years, she also focused her efforts on building the capacity of facilitators and designing interesting and challenging curricula as well exploring the world of education technology and online learning.

Ines has also been learning about and experimenting with theories of change including Future Thinking, Theory U and Transformative Scenarios, across different contexts and topics.

She earned her MA in English Education in 2017 and focused her research on the use of film in the classroom.
Since she was a little child, Ines has always been fascinated by stories and storytelling, and over the years she tried out its various forms from filmmaking and writing children stories, to podcasting.

Leila has over 20 years of global and cross-cultural experience in Africa, Europe, and North America. She has been an active participant in the African entrepreneurship ecosystem since 2008. She has launched and managed several organizations and incubation/acceleration programs, providing technical and financial support for startups and SMEs, from the Microsoft Innovation Center, the first Tunisian startup incubator, to Yunus Social Business Tunisia and Impact Partner, the leading impact SSO (Startup Support Organization) in Tunisia.

Leila fundraised $5 million from donors and investors, including the EU, the AfDB, and the IFC. She has mentored over 100 entrepreneurs and advised more than 20 SSOs in Africa.

Previously, Leila worked for 6 years in Canada and France as a software developer and project support manager in the wireless divisions of Nortel Networks and then Alcatel Lucent.

Leila is also interested in the ecological transition and the circular economy, where she volunteers with Tunisie Recyclage, a waste management NGO, and the Association Tunisienne de Permaculture, an NGO promoting agroecology.

Leila holds a degree in computer engineering from ENSI Tunisia, a Master's degree in Telecommunications from the University of Ottawa, and a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University.

Arthur Steiner is a strategist and curator working at the intersection of digital rights, climate justice and contemporary art. He is co-founder of New Silk Roads

He is committed to strengthening cultural organizations, foundations, and social enterprises to maximize their effectiveness and make them future proof. Most recently, he worked at Hivos, where he was in charge of various strategic grantmaking programs and developing the organization-wide digital strategy. He also set up Digital Earth, a research fellowship that provides support for artists and designers as they explore questions related to digital futures, including an educational trajectory, a decentralized residency program, numerous exhibitions, and public programs around the world.

Arthur also regularly curates art exhibitions and events in museums and art spaces around the world

Trained as a scientist, Safa is now working at the intersection of technology, art and community building. She is also the founder of Khyoott, a unique embroidery business that uses traditional techniques to create modern art pieces.

Safa holds an engineering degree from the National Engineering School of Tunis. She was also a recipient of the U.S. State Department Thomas Jefferson Scholarship, an exchange program through which she studied technology and engineering management at Saginaw Valley State University.

Born and raised in Tunisia, Safa has made homes in Syria, Mauritania, France, and at one point, Michigan.

Keith has over 20 years of experience in investment management, entrepreneurship and ecosystem building—from pre-seed capital through to scale ups—with an emphasis on strategy, financing and coaching for results. After co-drafting the Business Angel Programme for the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, he helped create and deliver the EU-backed Ready for Equity training across Europe and Asia, as well as a more pragmatic programme of investment readiness for Erasmus University Rotterdam, called Get Started!.

He also established an active network of younger investors at DeInvesteerdersClub, which Keith chaired for a decade and where he now serves as Honorary President. As chair, he oversaw ‘intervision’ sessions designed to improve the knowledge and success of members in deal-making, as well as trained over 1,000 entrepreneurs in investment readiness, resulting in a 20% success record in presenting start-ups to the collective, and over 40 startups receiving funding in the last ten years.

Keith also helped establish and is now the Managing Director of Hivos Impact Investments, a food fund that targets Africa. Keith is Chairman of BAN Netherlands, the Dutch national umbrella organisation for business angels. He also speaks, coaches and advises across Africa, Asia and Europe (and occasionally further) with Get In The Ring, an entrepreneurial contest that has taken place in 150 cities across the globe.

Farah works in the field of social entrepreneurship in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. She joined the New Silk Roads team early 2022 as a fundraiser, focusing on supporting Egyptian grassroots organisations outside of the capital. She also conducts training in proposal writing and programme development.

Prior to joining New Silk Roads, Farah worked with Hivos and GFA on the implementation of a variety of entrepreneurial support programs. Her areas of expertise include green entrepreneurship, migrant/refugee entrepreneurship, job creation and collaborative spaces. Farah holds a BA in Arabic Studies and an MA in Middle Eastern Studies, both from the University of Amsterdam. She divides her time between living in Cairo and Amsterdam where she both has roots.

Mutaz Alnaas brings an extensive background in social entrepreneurship, impact strategy, and innovation. As the former Impact Lead at Hivos's GreenWorks program, Mutaz created a diverse range of impact measurement tools in collaboration with over 18 BSOs in the MENA region and contributed to mentoring and evaluating the societal impact of over 300 startups in Egypt, Algeria, and Tunisia. As an Associate at Voluntas, Mutaz also oversaw entrepreneurship ecosystem program evaluations in Libya, as well as conducting thorough research on climate policy and business innovation in 10 MENA countries, including Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine.

Mutaz holds an MSc in Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship from the London School of Economics. He divides his time between Tunisia and Libya.

Helga works in the field of cultural entrepreneurship, international cooperation, social impact, and creative industries.

She is the co-founder of New Silk Roads and was the director until 2022. In close collaboration with the New Silk Roads team, she initiated several new programs, such as Afkar Fellows, the Bavaria Expedition, and Future Labs. Currently, Helga works at Amerpodia as Head of Development.

Previously, Helga was the business director at the creative collective Lima Limo, project leader of the first conference on broad prosperity in the Netherlands, community architect of Enviu- creating world changing companies-, and project manager of the first regional Coworking Summit in Tunis, Tunisia.

She holds a masters in International Relations from the University of Amsterdam, where she studied cultural anthropology and sociology.

Boudewijn is a partner with Atlas Tax Lawyers where he heads the M&A/National practice. He specializes in advising all tax aspects of transactions, projects and investments as well as day-to-day tax advice to Dutch headquartered corporates. Boudewijn is an allround tax lawyer having extensive knowledge in the field of Dutch corporate tax, income tax, real estate transfer tax as well as international tax.

Before joining Atlas in 2015, Boudewijn worked in the Amsterdam and Dusseldorf offices of two UK based global law firms as an M&A tax lawyer for seven years. He studied Tax Law and Corporate Law at Leiden University, followed the postgraduate course International and European Tax Law at the International Tax Center Leiden and holds a BSc in Economics and Finance from the University of London / LSE.

Boudewijn joined the board of NewSilkRoads in 2014 and regularly visits local projects in e.g. Tunisia.

Dorothé loves to work on so many things, that she really enjoys to combine as much as possible. She thrives to guide others with creative resilience to grow both personally and professionally. Holding a masters of Law at Leiden University, she worked as a candidate-civil law notary, as a team manager, as a project manager, as a coach and all other titles that came along. She worked for anyone and everything from big corporations, changing teams, young professionals to children.

She is currently initiating a new consultancy company Helix Felix to further empower resilience in society, organisations and people’s lives.