Jeanette Scherpenzeel is Lead Program Manager for Sustainable Tourism Development at CBI, the Centre for the Promotion of Imports from developing countries. Under the mandate of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, CBI strengthens Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) to connect to European markets with a sustainable product offer aligned to European demand. In the past 8 years, Jeanette learned her way around the tourism sector. She designed and implemented sustainable tourism projects in Uganda, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia. Jeanette believes in development by developing sustainable business. Which is what she finds in CBI: support tour operators and tourism organizations to generate income and employment. Based at CBI Head Quarters in the Hague, her current focus is the CBI project to scale-up sustainable tourism in Uganda. In parallel, she is engaged in an export promotion project for dried mango from West-African countries to EU markets.

Jeanette is a trained economist with a specialization in International Economic Theory. She worked as a diplomat for the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and advisor to the Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation. She started her career as renewable energy consultant for the World Bank.

CBI works in over 25 countries and is active in 13 sectors. CBI offers a free database with trends in tourism niche markets in Europe at www.cbi.eu/market-information.