We start each year with great, “clean slate” vibes - motivated, with clear and substantiated goals and objectives defined. This allows us to maintain our steady growth, one iteration at a time.

When we welcomed this new year, we decided that our first and foremost priority would be to truly focus on streamlining our way of working. We spent the past years focusing first on growth – we thought it was time for a return to the foundations.

Primarily, we wanted to do this by introducing more uniformity, regularity – or as we like to call it, rhythm – and transparency across teams. This adds efficiency and predictability and makes our operations more cost-efficient and easier to maintain.

Another part of this goal was acquiring dedicated senior expertise to complement, challenge and enrich our organisation and leadership on different levels. One of those levels is “corporate and client strategy” – allowing us to better understand, interact with, drive and enable our clients, our portfolio companies like Spencer, and eventually November Five itself.

In light of this, we are very proud to announce that Phillip Vandervoort will be joining November Five as our first Executive Strategic Advisor & Member of our Board!

You might know Phillip as the former Chief Consumer Market Officer at Proximus, where he had a leading role in the transition from Belgacom into Proximus as we know it today. He has an impressive career record: before joining Proximus, he held positions as COO at Microsoft South America, CEO of Microsoft Belux & Portugal, and CIO at AB InBev, where he simultaneously also held positions as president of Interbrew in France en Business Unit President of Central Europe.

In other words, he’s spent decades at the crossroad of corporate strategy and technology!

In his new position as Executive Strategic Advisor, Phillip will be our Leadership team’s sounding board, providing us with unbiased insights and ideas, both strategically and operationally, from an external point of view. He will help us with business development and maintenance, thanks to his impressive expertise across industries. And finally, he’ll consult us as a subject matter expert, working with our internal strategy design team and taking part in strategy ideations, lifting our already impressive in-house knowledge to the next pane.

“Fascinating times lie ahead for companies with digital and technology in their DNA. Finding the sweet spots of efficiency and effectiveness in execution will separate winners from followers. November Five is lined up to be a winner. I’m honored and delighted to become a part of the team!” – Phillip Vandervoort

Phillip will also be working for our portfolio companies. For now, he’ll focus on November Five and Spencer.

Our paths crossed about 2 years ago, and after numerous very inspiring and effective conversations, Phillip has made the decision of stepping away from corporate leadership and getting back in the trenches here with us at November Five! We are proud and honoured to welcome him to the Family and are very much looking forward to our amazing adventures ahead.