Overview

Niek Jan van Damme is an accomplished executive and board member with more than 20 years of experience in the telecommunications, marketing, and technology industries. His expertise spans growth, restructuring, and post-merger integration, with a particular focus on aligning culture, operations, and commercial strategy to deliver sustained performance. Having led through mergers and acquisitions as both an operator and as an executive director, he brings a pragmatic perspective on driving transformation at scale. Van Damme has lived and worked in Europe and Australia, and speaks fluent Dutch, German, and English.

Career History

At present, Van Damme is the Chairman of the Supervisory Board for NGN Networks Germany, a subsidiary of Euronet (fiber), Chair of the Neuland.ai (artificial intelligence) Supervisory Board, and Chair of the Uplink (broadcast) Strategy Advisory Board. He is also an Advisory Board Member of AVM Fritz! (internet hardware), LotusFlare (software development), and Glow Financial Services, amongst others.

Most recently, Van Damme served as a nonexecutive director on the Board of Telstra in Australia and as Board Member for Deutsche Telekom in Bonn, where he oversaw the merger of Germany Fixed and Mobile. In this role, Van Damme led the major turnaround of the 95,000-employee organization, resulting in growth in both revenues (€20B) and EBITDA margin (40%) by the end of his tenure.

Van Damme began his career in the telecommunications industry with Ben Netherlands (later acquired by Deutsche Telekom) and was responsible for the rebranding to T-Mobile. Under Van Damme’s leadership as Managing Director for T-Mobile Nederland, the organization experienced double-digit growth and jumped from the number five to the number three mobile operator in the market. As part of this journey, he led through the successful merger of T-Mobile and Orange Netherlands with an annual turnover of €1.8B and serving over 5.3M customers.

Before transitioning to the telecommunications industry, he began his career in marketing, branding, and advertising. Van Damme served as Commercial Manager for Ahold Delhaize, and prior to that as Brand Manager for Procter & Gamble, where he was responsible for marketing of brands such as Fairy Liquid, Lenor, and Pampers for the Dutch market.

Personal

Van Damme holds an MBA with a specialization in Management from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is married, enjoys going on holidays abroad, particularly to Africa, and devotes his free time to horseback riding, architecture, art, and cooking. He currently resides in Siegburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.