Martin Van Der Mandele Heads RAND Europe

Martin van der Mandele, a strategic management consultant with wide experience across Europe, has been appointed to head RAND Europe, RAND President and CEO James A. Thomson announced today.

Van der Mandele, who is a citizen of the Netherlands, is the first European to head RAND Europe in the institution's 10-year history. RAND Europe is part of RAND, a nonprofit institution headquartered in the United States that helps to improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis.

“With a staff that is already primarily European, and now with a European director, RAND Europe is well-positioned to extend its record of providing clients in government and business with high-quality, objective analysis to meet the challenges they face,” Thomson said.

“What attracted me to RAND was the unique quality, independence and global reach of the organization, and its ambition to help solve the most difficult problems facing Europe and the rest of the world,” van der Mandele said. “Over the last 10 years, RAND has established a strong foothold in Europe. I look forward to building on what we have achieved, so that RAND can do more to help Europeans build a better future.”

Van der Mandele succeeds David Gompert, who is returning to RAND's Washington, D.C. office after three years as president of RAND Europe to become emeritus vice president. Gompert will be involved in market development, research and other corporate activities.

During Gompert's term as president, RAND Europe made significant strides toward its vision of being the pre-eminent European policy research organization. RAND Europe expanded to include three offices and four research programs—surface transport and aviation; defense and security; health and society; and information society.

Headquartered in Leiden, the Netherlands—and with offices in Berlin and Cambridge—RAND Europe serves the region's governments, business and other institutions with a 75-person staff.

Van der Mandele has been a senior fellow in RAND's Santa Monica office since April. For most of his career, he was a management consultant, first with Booz Allen & Hamilton in New York, Hamburg, Vienna, and Paris; and later with Arthur D. Little in Brussels and Rotterdam.

At Arthur D. Little, van der Mandele established the Dutch office and served as its managing director and later chairman. For many years, he was a member of Arthur D. Little's European Executive Board.

Van der Mandele's research interests have focused on strategy, organization and technology management. He has published articles in a number of Dutch business journals and newspapers, and is working on a book on inflection point management.

Van der Mandele has a master's degree in business from the University of Chicago and a law degree from Leiden University.