Online Alumni Perspectives March 2025
Online Alumni Perspectives March 2025

MEET OUR FPN ALUMNI

 

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Simon Büschges

Simon is an employee experience and HR consultant at Capgemini Invent based in Berlin. His focus lies on topics related to innovative HR, such as using AI in HR. In general, he is passionate about how people experience their jobs. Since this affects many different variables, from individual satisfaction to organizational outcomes, it's important that workplaces benefit everyone. In his role, Simon supports organizations in creating environments where employees feel valued, can grow and have a sense of belonging.
 
Simon's background gives him a unique and international perspective on the HR function. He has studied work and organizational psychology at Maastricht University and management at Peking University (China) and Yonsei University (South Korea). Beyond academia, his experiences stretch from start-up to large international corporation. In various roles, he's focused on improving people's experience at work, whether they're fully remote, hybrid or in-person.
 
Outside of his professional interest, Simons loves exploring Berlin in all its facets, traveling (mainl in Asia), and connecting with people from all over the world.

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Jikke Hesen
 
Jikke was bors and raised in Limburg. In 2016, Jikke moved to Groningen to start her Bachelor's degree in Philosophy at the University of Groningen. Here, she discoverd her particular interest in philosophy of psychology, neuroscience and the mind. As a result, she decided that she would like to know more about the scientific side of thse disciplines and took on extra (statistics) courses to develop scientific skills. After she completed her BA Philosophy in 2019, she started her first Master's degree in Cognitive Neuroscience at Maastricht University. In the same year, she also enrolled in the Research Master Philosophy of Mind at Radboud University.
 
Towards the end of her second master's degree, Jikke was unsure about pursuing a career in academics. She liked doing research, but also discoverd that doing literature research (which is commin in Philosophy) can be quite a lonely endeavour. Additionnally, she realized that her interests are very borad, and looking at the same specialised topic for four years seems like a long time...until she came across the vacancy for her current PhD position.
 
Currently, Jikke is working as a PhD student at the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience. Her research focuses on the different causes of obesity and overweight, looking at variables in the biological, psychological, environmental and behavorial domain. Even though the topic is unrelated to anything she had studied before, she enjoys learning about the topic and like the multidisciplinary and practical nature of her research project. Together with the other PhD students in her research team, she hopes that she can contribute to personalized treatment for obesity.

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Eveline Persoon
 
Eveline Persoon works as a programme coordinator for professional development at EDLAD, Maastricht University's Centre for Teaching and Learning. In this position, Eveline organises activities that help Maastricht University teachers and educators develop their professional competencies further. Next to this, Eveline teaches a university course on developmental psychology. Getting to this position did not necessarily happen through the "conventional" route. After high school, Eveline deciced to become a primary school teacher. After three years of doing internships in various primary schools and learning a lot about pedagogy and didactics, Eveline felt that there was more to explore within the field of the developing mind. Studying psychology and later developmental psychology felt like a logical next step and led her to become a child and adolescent psychologist. Building further on her studies, Eveline decided to do a clinical internship, during which she realised her heart lied with teaching. Her desire to combine all her interests - teaching developmental psychology while helping other teachers develop themselves professionally - brought Eveline to her current position at EDLAB. In her private life, Eveline loves spending time with her partner and their son, cooking, baking, taking long walks and going to movies.

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Renzo Riemens
 
Renzo was born and raised in the south of Zeeland, the Netherlands. In 2014, he successfully obtained his Bachelor's degree in Biomedical Sciences with a specialization in Molecular Life Sciences at Maastricht University, after which he entered the Research Master program in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience with a specialization in Fundamental Neuroscience. For the compulsory 9-month internship, Renzo joined the research team of Dr. Raul Delgado-Morales and Prof. Dr. Manel Esteller at the "Institut d'investigació Biomédica de Bellvitge"(IDIBELL), in Barcelona, Spain. After succesfully completing his Research Master studies in 2016, Renzo started a joint PhD program focused on neuroepigenomics and stem cell-based models in Alzheimer's Disease (AD) between Maastricht University and Julius Maximilians-University in Wuerzburg, Germany, under the primary supervision of Dr. Daniel van den Hove and Prof. Dr. Thomas Haaf, respectively. During his time as a PhD student, he furthermore visited the group of Dr. Tim Vanmierlo at the University of Hasselt in Belgium for a research stay. In 2020, Renzo was awarded a Kootstra Talent Fellowship for young talented scientific researchers by the Maastricht UMC+ Research Committee, which allowed him to kick-start his postdoc position in the group of Prof. Dr. Daniel van den Hove and Dr. Gunter Kenis at the Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology, Maastricht University. During his time as a postdoc, he furthermore secured a ZonMw Memorabel Fellowship and an Alzheimer Nederland pilot grant to further fund his research. Currently, Renzo is working as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology, where he teaches in several bachelor and master programs and conducts research within the context of neuroepigenomics in AD through the implementation of both targeted and epigenome-wide (single-cell) approaches as well as induced pluripotent stemm cell-based model systems.
 

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Jocelyn Tang
 
Jocelyn was born and raised in Malaysia where she obtained her Bachelor Sc (Hons) Psychology. She then pursued her master's education in Maastricht University under the Work and Organisational track, graduating in the class of 2016-2017. Since then, she has been no stranger in the field of Human Resources, specialising in HR Rewards and Information Systems in multinational organisations. Passionate about people analytics, she is currently the Global HR Information Systems (SME) Manager at Versuni, servicing 51 countries in her scope. In her current role, she provides guidance to local teams on best practices and efficient use of HR systems and people date. She is also involved in project management where she drives delivery of outcomes from local teams and ensures a smooth implementations of HR employee facing systems, which is a key factor in promoting an optimal employee experience in an organisation. 

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András Wagner
 
Andras Wagner, an expert in human resources with experience in top multinational companies, is on a mission to help students clarify junior career challenges and make well-informed decisions regarding job search and career development. Through numerous guest lectures at business schools and universities, online workshops and individual consultations, he and his peers aim to prepare future HR professionals and consultants for industry realities.
 
Employee turnover is highest among those with less than six months of tenure, often due to misleading position titles, vague job descriptions, and unclear career prospects. Job strain, ambiguity, and disappointment are often experienced among interns, career starters and juniors in the field.
 
This initiative seeks to address these issues by:
  • Decoding HR positions for students: interactive Q/A sessions with senior experts.
  • Job Fair preparations with recruiters: Strategies to maximize benefits from job fairs.
  • Navigating through buzzwords: Breaking down trending topics such as leadership development, employee experience or change managment.

Feel free to contact me via LinkedIn and write your questions beforehand to make the session as relevant as we can:

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