Simone Brummelhuis

Founder of thenextwomen.com and iens.nl. VP Europe of Astia.org Simone Brummelhuis is VP Europe of Astia.org, the premier entrepreneur programme for high-growth women-led companies. She is founder and CEO of The NextWomen, the Female Business Brand publishing the First Women’s Internet Business Magazine and Community and behind successful concepts as Kitchen Dinners, Funding & Pitching events and TheNextWomen Mentoring programme. She worked for 10 years as an international corporate lawyer (Skadden, New York & Loeff Claeys Verbeke, Amsterdam, New York) before setting up her own B2B publishing company Brummsbooks. Thereafter, she joined VC backed IENS.nl as co-owner and managing director; she developed this start-up into the no. 1 leading user generated content database publisher of restaurant information in The Netherlands. Simone is a frequent judge on business plan competitions & awards (such as yearly Accenture Media Innovation Awards, UK Pitch ’09, NACUE Varsity Awards, Sprout Challenger competition, Suikeroom Pitch competitions 2010, UK Everywoman Technology Awards 2011, 2012), she was guest-editor-in-chief for the Dutch Female Business Heroes Issue of Sprout in cooperation with The NextWomen, she has presented the internet program SHE (interviews with business women) on Blueshotstv, she sits on the Dutch City Luncheon Committee in London, on the committee of Recommendation of the www.1procentclub.nl and is a frequent speaker through Women.Inc and TheNextSpeaker on subjects as female entrepreneurship, social media, networking, innovation and internet concepts. She was nominated as online Media woman of the Year 2010, won the Pioneering Award 2008 and was among the 20 women to follow on Twitter for Business, Marketing, Technology advice on Forbes.com.