Who are you?
I’m Barbel van Spreeuwel, born and raised in Flanders – the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. And I’ve already been working and living in Luxembourg for more than 20 years now…time flies. When I decided to come to Luxembourg to join my fiancé at that time, who is now my husband, I was already working as a Financial Reporting Officer for the Investment Fund Industry in Brussels, so the professional switch to Luxembourg was not too hard. We have two wonderful daughters who keep us entertained at each age, for the moment we are enjoying their teenage period immensely ;-).
How did you land at Tokeny Solutions?
I was contacted by Tokeny when they were in need of an extra team member. They had managed to attract a big institutional investor, new internal reporting needs popped up, extra follow-up of the accounting needed to be set up and there are, as always, the day-to-day administrative tasks to take care of.
Daniel and Luc managed to trigger my curiosity about working in a start-up environment (completely out of my comfort zone !) and they kind of immediately gained my trust in their view on the new business opportunities related to tokenization and blockchain technology. It looked like an exciting adventure, and it turned out to be so.
How would you describe working at Tokeny Solutions?
I was immediately immersed in Tokeny’s digital way of working, thanks to the support of my (younger) colleagues, I managed to transform smoothly into my new, digital “me”.
Remote working was already possible at Tokeny before COVID messed up our lives, and I really enjoy the combination of remote work and office work.
Even though I don’t have a day-to-day relationship with other departments, thanks to the communication tools and efforts made by our management, I do feel connected to what is happening despite the almost 100% home office experience for the last 18 months.
What are you most passionate about in life?
Healthy food, having a good dinner/lunch in any type of restaurant, interior decoration, fashion, traveling, meeting up with family and friends, music… All the simple things in life (but sports are not in my list I’m afraid :))
What is your ultimate dream?
A very personal one….
It would be fantastic if the eternal Flame of Hope – located in London, Ontario, in Canada – could be extinguished, preferably still in my lifetime, because this means that a cure has been found for Diabetes and people suffering from Diabetes will no longer be dependent on external insulin injections.
My family actively contributes to this search for a cure through our participation in a European research project called INNODIA. Fingers crossed for some great outcome……
What would you change in the world if you could?
I would say that many topics remain to be addressed, but in general, I believe that through technological and scientific advances we will continue to overcome the major problems that we will encounter as human beings.
And on a more emotional/mental level: let’s all be as much open-minded as possible and try to stick to a positive and constructive attitude.
