Getting to People & Impact

This is where it all started, right after my career in the banking world. Fifteen years ago, under the guidance of Anne de Jong (who later founded Nonons), I discovered that my passion didn’t lie in the abstract world of finance. We realized that I had become like a robot and wasn't showing my emotions. I wasn't happy with that! And so, my search for my purpose and my intrinsic motivation began.

I will let you know step-by-step over the coming weeks how that search ends (or if it ever ends)!

After five years of pioneering in the recruitment world—where I co-founded Pure Ambition with Jasper Heikens at @NEST—my true drive became clearer: I want to work with and for people.

With Pure Ambition, we matched candidates and impact-driven organizations based on intrinsic motivation. In 2013, that was a forward-thinking concept—perhaps even too early for the market. Commercially, it wasn’t a success, but the idea itself was definitely right. This is clear today, as platforms like @Greenjobs show there is a real demand for it.

Still, I don’t see Pure Ambition as a failure. On the contrary: it was a valuable and inspiring adventure that taught me a lot. For example, I learned that recruitment is a specialized profession that requires real experts. But more importantly: this experience made it clear to me how important impact-driven work is. That is exactly what I wanted to focus on and explore further. That became the next step in my career.

People and impact. These are broad terms that you can interpret in many ways. You can make an impact yourself through everything you do, and you can experience impact by working for an organization that makes a difference. Ultimately, you decide for yourself what that impact exactly is.

For me, impact means contributing to a more sustainable and socially better world, as long as I am working with and for people. That ambition became clearer and clearer to me.

Ten years ago, that ambition really got the space to grow when Ingrid Keller from Spoony gave me a chance. She gave me access to the team and responsibility for the HR policy. I dove into it with full commitment. It didn't just become a new step, but also my profession: HR & People Manager.

That was an essential chapter and the foundation for the steps I’ve taken since then. A journey that led me to BrightPensioen | B Corp™ over the past few years, where I enjoyed building great ambitions together with the founders, the management team, and the staff.

That came to an end in 2026. And as the saying goes—if you know me a little—every end is also the start of a new adventure. What remains the same is that I will continue to focus on People and Impact for the next twenty years. This adventure starts soon!

My new adventure for the next 20 years? I am going to work as a fractional HR & People Manager (no surprise there, right?).

I will be doing this under the name: 

UpScaling People: To Grow your Impact, you scale your People.

I’m taking all my experiences, successes, failures, frustrations, and milestones with me, along with my passion for growing organizations and scaling people. Because that is what I do it for!

Thank you to everyone who has helped me in this search over the past few months. Thanks to the many cups of coffee and the requested (and especially the unrequested) advice from all of you, it has become clear to me what will make me happy for the next twenty years of my career.

Banking wasn’t for me. Recruitment wasn’t for me. Being a fully independent entrepreneur wasn’t for me either. The role of a standalone HR Manager partially fit, but the purely operational side much less so. Sometimes you need a little push to figure that out.

And because I don’t like working alone—but instead want to work with and for people—I have decided to join Grooblue | B Corp™. Thank you Emilie van Ittersum, Sabine Kam-Schuil, Hanna Huisman, Frederik Claasen, and the rest for letting me join; we are going to make a lot of impact together!

What is UpScaling People?

You can only increase your impact by letting your people grow. I believe in that, and I am fully committed to it. Together with founders, managers, and their teams, I will help realize your company's ambitions by focusing on what really matters: the people. In a management team, there are often good ideas, but the challenge is translating and communicating these to the teams—from the most senior employee to the newest hire. I’ve seen this go wrong often enough, and I was responsible for that myself at times too. That’s why I now want to focus entirely on this: helping companies truly grow their impact by scaling their people.

Want to know more? get in touch!

Yann Weijer

0621469382

yann@upscalingpeople.com