Managing Director GOPA AFC and GOPA MetaMeta 

Marc van der Stouwe is Managing Director at GOPA AFC and its newly acquired subsidiary company MetaMeta Research B.V. in The Netherlands. He focuses on expanding GOPA’s work in the interrelated areas of water, climate, food and agriculture, and increasing its impact by developing a more innovative, integrated and multidisciplinary service offer. GOPA AFC’s technical solutions address the world’s most pressing challenges, creating positive impact for the individuals, communities and institutions it works with, as well as our planet.

Marc has extensive experience as a senior leader in international development. He worked and lived abroad from 2003 to 2015. During this period, he led a range of large-scale development programmes for international donor agencies. In Thailand he delivered a multi-donor education and skills programme for refugees from Myanmar. In Bangladesh he was responsible for a GBP 50 million education and media programme funded by the UK Government. This programme, called English in Action, introduced a range of high-quality, low-cost English language opportunities delivered across different media and also supported primary and secondary teachers to teach English in radically different ways. Millions of Bangladeshi people improved their English language skills as a result. In Rwanda, Marc worked as Fund Manager for the UK Government, overseeing a GBP 17 million innovation fund and working closely with the Rwandan Ministry of Education to use innovations as a catalyst for sector-wide change.

After returning to The Netherlands in 2015, Marc assumed different corporate leadership roles for the global firm Mott MacDonald, which included Regional Portfolio Manager Asia for Cambridge Education (an affiliate company of Mott MacDonald), Divisional Manager Economic and Social Development and Managing Director for Mott MacDonald in The Netherlands. He also worked as Global Sector Leader International Development, providing strategic leadership across the entire Mott MacDonald Group. Whilst involved in these corporate leadership roles, he continued to remain close to project delivery by assuming project director roles for various large projects, including in the DRC, Somaliland and Bangladesh.

Marc is passionate about international development and strongly believes in the impact we can make through localised delivery of high-quality projects at scale. He has a particular interest in innovation, scaling up and ensuring sustainability of development interventions and in creating enabling institutional environments that make such sustainable change a reality.

Marc holds an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Groningen in The Netherlands.