Team

Patrick Stoop ​​
General Managing Partner

Patrick Stoop is the general managing partner and founder of C-lever.org. He has a background in law and economics and brings 40 years of experience in the public, social profit, and private sectors. He worked for over 300 organisations, covering central, regional and local government institutions, SOEs, social profit and non-governmental organisations and private sector organisations, mainly impact-driven enterprises. He thus worked in Belgium and through international organisations, bilateral development,t cooperation and (impact) enterprises in approximately 40 countries across Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America / the Caribbean and the Middle East. 
Patrick has mostly been working on the crossroads between vision, strategy, policy & budget cycle, program/project design, planning & control, monitoring, evaluation, management, governance, internal control systems, risk management, organizational and institutional development, change processes, human resources management, competence development, financial management, system analysis, business models, sustainable supply chains, business optimisation, organisational assessments, operational audits, etc. 
He has extensive experience in a broad range of governance areas, including corporate social responsibility, impact measurement and management and stakeholder accountability. Patrick works across many sectors including agriculture, health, education, justice, economics, (social) entrepreneurship development, social services,  employment etc. 
Patrick is an active member of Social Value International.

Paul Lambers ​
Administrator

Paul Lambers, a Belgian national, is a trilingual expert (fluent in English and French, fair Spanish) with over 30 years of experience in Public Finance Management in developing and Eastern European countries. In 2017 he became a partner and shareholder of C-lever.org. From 2003 until 2013 he worked in Rwanda, Burundi and DRC as a long-term technical assistant on behalf of the Belgian development agency (ENABEL) and from 2013 until today he implemented a significant number of short-term assignments in Burundi, Uganda, Rwanda, DRC, South Sudan, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali and Morocco. He advised on the formulation of public finance reform programmes and development of financial and institutional support programmes as well as prepared and monitored PEFA evaluations of PFM systems for the EU, the World Bank and the ADB. He also implemented numerous organisational and institutional assessments of ENABEL partners in Africa applying for subsidies. From 2001 to 2002 he performed as a technical advisor to the Ministry of Finance and Economic Management of Vanuatu on public finance management systems and controls (budget preparation and monitoring, and coordination of external financing) - He also prepared for the IMF missions to Vanuatu. Between 1989 and 1999 he implemented a large number of short-term assignments in Africa, Latin America and Eastern European countries predominantly within the EU TACIS programme: Russia, Moldova, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and the FYROM. From 1977 until 1986 he served as an ILO-associated expert and expert in 3 different cooperative development projects in Côte d'Ivoire, Cameroon and Gabon.

Hilde Geens ​
Partner

Hilde Geens holds a master’s degree in political communication and a master’s degree in international relations and diplomacy. With 10 years of professional experience, her areas of expertise include monitoring and evaluation, capacity building, outcome mapping, theory of change and M&E systems. Hilde has professional experience as a regional programme officer for the Great Lakes Region and as a Quality and methodology policy advisor for a Health sector NGO. Hilde is currently a partner at C-lever.org. In this capacity, she contributed to multiple assignments related to corporate accountability in the cocoa value chain. Currently, she supports national initiatives on sustainable cocoa in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands with their annual data collection, data analysis and reporting cycles. As a MEAL expert, Hilde also completed various monitoring and evaluation assignments for DGD-funded programmes. Hilde’s working languages include Dutch, French and English.

Else Keyers ​

Associate Partner

Else Keyers has more than 15 years of work experience as a Belgian diplomat and in the European Union institutions. Working on multiple bilateral and multilateral foreign policy issues on all continents, she has chosen to specialize in conflict transformation processes. Else Keyers is a trained peace mediator and dialogue facilitator. She has extensive experience in conflict and context analysis, process design and evaluation, especially in the public sector. Furthermore, she provides political and strategic advice. In the field of international cooperation, her thematic focus lies on democracy, governance, gender equality and human rights. She is fluent in seven languages (Dutch, French, German, English, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian). Else has been working with C-lever.org since 2021 on various projects in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and in Belgium related to conflict transformation, human rights, policy evaluation and capacity-strengthening of organisations.

 

Namratha Ramanan ​​

Associate partner

Namratha Ramanan (Human rights/Child Rights Expert) has worked for over 8 years on children’s and human rights. She has field experience with laborers in slavery and slavery-like situations in cotton, coffee, cocoa, rice and sugar cane plantations in India, child laborers in informal labour sectors and has worked on projects to address children’s and human rights violations in the business and agricultural value chains.

Namratha is an associated partner at C-lever.org. In this capacity she has contributed to different assignments such as organizational capacity and strategic evaluations; research on cocoa traceability, development of indicators to assess child labour in cocoa supply chains, decent work risk assessments in the cotton sector in India and Africa and conducted studies on migration and women’s economic empowerment.

Karim Chetioui ​
Associate Partner

Karim is a dual national, Belgian-Tunisian, who is specialized in the field of labour and employment policies. With 18 years of professional background in the private and public sector, he gained over 10 years of experience in designing and delivering international cooperation projects.  His career encompasses a record of successful contributions in steering strategic activities,  change management, capacity building, monitoring & evaluation processes, organisational and/or institutional empowerment, and building synergies between public and private actors.
He held multiple executive positions at the Brussels Public Employment Agency (ACTIRIS), including as a member of the executive board, head of the international affairs department and advisor for the European Public Employment Services Network. He also worked in very different contexts around the globe such as Belgium, Burkina Faso, Benin, Ivory Coast, Latvia, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger and Tunisia, with the aim of strengthening the capacities of public and private organisations. Karim is fluent in French, English and Arabic. 

Koen Sneyers ​

Associate partner 

Koen Sneyers  lives and works in Uganda since 12 years. He obtained a Master’s degree in Bio engineering on forest & nature management followed by a 1 year on tropical agriculture & irrigation at the University of Leuven. Koen gained practical experience in advisory and managerial roles with both bilateral development agencies, NGO`s and private sector companies. Gradually he oriented his career towards supply chain monitoring and sustainability certification of coffee & cocoa. Koen is passionate about the sustainability of agribusiness interventions in Africa.

Since his role as agribusiness manager with a Ugandan exporter of sustainable coffees (2016-2021), Koen holds a sound understanding of the sustainability interests by international coffee markets. He  shows a pragmatic but transparent approach on how to measure and report the impact of responsible sourcing programs despite the challenging working environment in East Africa. Because of his understanding of the local industry context he regularly provides his verification services to Rainforest Alliance and due diligence expertise to industry actors. Koen speaks fluent English and Dutch and understands French and to a certain extent Spanish and Kiswahili.

Gianfabrizio Ladini ​

Associate partner 

Gianfabrizio Ladini joined C-lever.org as Associated partner in May 2023. He is a seasoned development professional with over 13 years of relevant experience focusing on fragile and conflict-affected contexts. He worked in community peacebuilding in the West Bank, Cyprus, and Kosovo, in refugee protection in Italy, and he has managed multi-annual, EU-funded projects mainly targeting Sub-Saharan Africa. The latter include state building in The Gambia, social protection and private sector development in Somalia, Public Financial Management in Nigeria, and a multi-country facility on resilience and food security. He conducted research on governance, customary authorities, and jihadism in Mali, finalising two publications in parallel to his first two assignments with C-lever.org: one on democratic governance and anti-corruption programming in Uganda, for the EU and the Belgian Cooperation Agency (Enabel); the other on a policy evaluation of the Belgian approach to fragility, for the Special Evaluation Office of the Belgian Development Cooperation. In the latter, ongoing, he works particularly on Sahel countries (Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso), and contributes to broader analyses and to project management. Gianfabrizio holds two MAs, in peace studies and in EU policy making, and a M.Sc. in governance and development. His M.Sc. dissertation was awarded the 2022 Prize for Global Research by the Province of Antwerp. He is fluent in English, French and Italian.

Wendy Braeken ​
Associate Partner

Wendy Braeken studied pedagogical sciences and has many years of experience in poverty reduction and development cooperation. She was active as a project designer, program- and project manager, a technical advisor and she set up several monitoring and evaluation frameworks for projects and programs.
Till so far she was active in Belgium, RDC Congo, Burundi, Uganda, Palestine and El Salvador, with longer stays in RDC, Ecuador and El Salvador.
For the last 13 years she mainly worked in the education sector where she formulated and/or supervised projects in the field of sectoral budget support, TVET, teacher training and scholarship projects. The last years her focus evolved to the development of monitoring and evaluation policies and the necessary instruments. The principles of Social Value are for her an important guidance, and the Social Return on Investment Methodology is a method she often uses.
In the various positions she held, she managed project teams and acted as an advisor to senior executives and management on a regular basis. She has a coaching attitude and wherever possible, she looks actively for collaborations and partnerships.

Lana Lovasic ​

Associate partner 

Hon. BSc, MBA. With a variety of experience over the past 16+ years, Lana’s common motivation has been an entrepreneurial drive to apply inclusive innovation to change the world towards a more fair, equitable and sustainable place. To this end, Lana has been an advisor, entrepreneur, and an impact investor. Over the years, Lana has also developed expertise in social enterprise and the social economy, innovative finance, incubation and acceleration, impact ecosystem building, and related research and policy work. She enjoys collaborating across sectors and has worked globally in these themes, with particular emphasis on emerging markets in Africa and Central and Eastern Europe. Lana previously co-founded Simanye, comprising an impact consultancy and a small fund for social enterprises, as well as Impact Hub Johannesburg, a co-working, programme and event space part of the global Impact Hub Network.  She has also sat on the steering committee of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs in South Africa and was part of several working groups related to impact enterprises and investments.  Some of Lana’s key clients and partnerships have included the ILO, UNDP, British Council, Social Enterprise UK, Plan International, Group SOS, ACT Grupa, Government of Finland, Toshiba, Flanders Government, Government of South Africa, Industrial Development Corporation, the European Union, and others.

Julie Volders ​
Junior Consultant

Julie holds a Master of Law (LL.M) in International and European law from the KU Leuven. She is particularly passionate about human rights and holds an additional Master in Human Rights and Democratization.  She finished a fellowship at the EU delegation to the United Nations in New York, gaining experience in international institutions and EU/UN human rights policy, focusing on women's rights and children's rights. She supported the Human Rights Section of the EU delegation during the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly. She is particularly schooled and interested in gender and gender-based violence, human rights (systems), international institutions and humanitarian law.  Julie also has experience in social entrepreneurship, social impact and project coordination as a volunteer student at Academics for Development, both in Belgium and Uganda.

Marthe Coppieters ​

Junior Consultant

Marthe is a dynamic economist with a broad interest and proficiency in development economics. Having earned her Master of Economics at KU Leuven, she further honed her expertise with a specialized Master in Economic Development and Growth from Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and Lund University. Her comprehensive economic training, coupled with a nuanced understanding of contextual factors, institutions, and historical legacies in developing economies, equips her to navigate the complexities of development challenges. Marthe's active involvement as a volunteer student with Academics for Development not only underscores her commitment but also provides valuable hands-on experience in social entrepreneurship, social impact, and on development projects.