About Gerda Lenselink

Ir. Lenselink is a dedicated professional in the field of sustainable land and water management. She works with enormous drive and passion. She connects people and brings coherence to groups of experts with different disciplines and lets them excel beyond individual capacities. She knows how to anticipate on social developments and new policies, and how to translate them into strategies for knowledge management. She is able to create new opportunities by combining her extensive knowledge with good personal relations with professionals and policy makers.

As an experienced program manager and excellent networker, Gerda bridges the gap between the worlds of water, soil and ecosystem, spatial planning, and governance. Her programs predominantly involve multiple parties and have complex financing constructions. Over the past decades, she has been engaged in several ecological restoration programs setting perspectives for the future. In these programs, she was involved in the joint fact-finding processes and evidence-based decision making. She also used her experience and skills for setting up international wetland training courses and learning communities. More recently, as Deltares’ program director in the consortium WarmingUP while working on collective heating systems, she was responsible for the integration of technical and social aspects of the energy transition. Knowledge dissemination and community building in the consortium and beyond were also part of this task.

Gerda is one of the Deltares’ coordinators on ‘Climate change, adaptation and mitigation’ within the cooperation with the ministry of Infrastructure and Waterstaat, and Rijkswaterstaat. In the Netherlands’ Delta Program she is responsible for strengthening the Deltares role and position, and fine tuning the working activities within Deltares. In addition, she is giving direction to the research on the Energy Transition within Deltares. New challenges are ahead in large programs, such as NL2120, generating more societal impact and social inclusiveness in close cooperation with partners.