Arne Brentjes is currently Head of the Strategy and Information Unit to the UvA Board.
He was born in Rotterdam (1955) and attended the Libanon Lyceum there. He took part in the XXth International Mathematical Olympiad (held in Toruń, 1972) and went on to obtain his PhD in Mathematics from Leiden University (with professor Rob Tijdeman, 1981), with a minor in mathematical economics from professor Bernard van Praag.
From 1981 till 2002, he was a researcher and policy advisor to the government of the Province of North Holland, initially on regional economic policy and from 1989 on finance and asset management. Between 1996 and 2002 he was Head of Finance and Assets, always with a particular interest in the value embedded in public services and assets. He found himself actively involved in the liberalisation and privatisation of (semi)public utilities in which the Province held large stakes (together with the City of Amsterdam where, incidentally, he met his wife Annelies). When he left the Province, he could not know that his successors would allow part of that value to be lost in Icelandic banks.
Arne joined the University of Amsterdam in a career switch, initially to become the Head of Internal Audit in 2002 and from 2006-2011 to lead the Corporate Control Unit, which was responsible for financial policy, estate investment planning and funding, institutional research and operational audit. His continuous objective is to raise awareness of cost and value with respect to the University's functions in society, and to promote cost-informed and strategic decision-making. With his team, he engineered the present system of performance-based internal funding and full economic cost accounting to complement the devolved management structure in the University. Having remained a mathematician, he favors the translation of management objectives into clear, sensible and transparent business arrangements and models, and knows that the wiring behind a simple management switchboard or dashboard will probably not be simple.
In 2011, he transferred the financial and estates planning functions to a new Finance and Control Unit aimed at enhancing the level of control within the University. With the institutional research and audit teams, he now focuses on the strategic issues of the University as an institution and on the development and production of reporting and decision data or models, changing the unit’s name to Strategy and Information. These strategic issues include the quality drive that underlies the University’s strategic plan and the governance and information aspects relating to the position of the University within the wider system of higher education and research in Amsterdam.

• Provincie Utrecht/ Nazorg Stortplaatsen
  Voorzitter Adviescommissie