ABOUT ME

in 100 words

I have a love-hate relationship with 'brand'. It's so powerful. It's so corrupting.

And I’m totally obsessed with it.

I've spent my 20+ year career as a designer and brand director experimenting with ways to channel its power for social and environmental change.

During those years, I've lived and worked on four continents, learning from diverse perspectives and problem-solving approaches.

I’m the founder of Brand The Change, a learning community where changemakers and brand builders join forces to build stronger brands for change.

I practice what I preach as a freelance Brand Director. Currently I’m with MESH, a professional social network for young people in the informal economy in Kenya, with over 150,000 members.

I share what I learn along the way with others.

I do this mostly through the written word (books, essays, case studies), but I also like a good stage (be it made of floorboards or pixels).

I live in Kenya since 2015 with my husband Gautam, our small human, and two very annoying cats.

Anne Miltenburg, brand director, author and educator, at her office in Kenya, leaning against a desk with arms crossed

👋 Need a bio in the third person?
Find it on the press page.

EVEN MORE WORDS

[aka the brag list ☺️]

PERSONAL

Born and raised in the Netherlands, I’ve lived and/or worked in 12 countries: 🇦🇺Australia, 🇺🇸 USA, 🇲🇱 Mali, 🇫🇷 France, 🇰🇷 Korea, 🇬🇧 UK, 🇹🇼 Taiwan, 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia, 🇹🇳 Tunisia, 🇯🇴 Jordan. I call 🇰🇪 Kenya home since 2015.

I’m planning to run my first marathon at 42 (fingers crossed - I’m now at 15km).

My TED talk has about 9,000 views, my husband’s has 1 million+. Marriage is not a competition, but he is winning.

CAREER Achievements

I was put in charge of the rebrand of the largest phone company in the Netherlands at age 25 (and we both survived to tell the tale).

I quit a perfectly good role as a creative director at Interbrand and moved to Kenya to set up Brand The Change.

I’ve written two books: the highly rated classic brand guidebook, Brand The Change, published worldwide and translated to Arabic and Korean, and Coming to America 2024, a graphic novel memoir.

I built a team, a community, and a group of certified trainers to spread our work worldwide. My method and tools are used by more than 10,000 people worldwide.

I ran two successful crowdfunding campaigns, raising $120,000 for creative projects.

teaching

I love to learn, and the best way to learn is to teach.

I’ve taught design at renown universities like the Design Academy (Eindhoven), Hong-Ik (Seoul), and the University of Venice.

I create learning experiences for some pretty awesome causes: women entering the job market in Saudi Arabia, young micro entrepreneurs in Kenya on TikTok, and I even got the Dutch Ministry of Defense to re-imagine itself as the Ministry of Peace (if only for a day).

Board memberships

I served on the board of the Dutch Designers Association for three years, and was a member of the industry advisory committee for the Willem de Kooning Academy, helping to establish their Master in Design program. I am also proud to be on the Board of Advisors for Book Bunk, a not-for-profit restoring Nairobi’s iconic libraries.

Awards

🏆🏆🏆 In my previous life as a designer, I won a European Design Award, an ADCN pencil, and was shortlisted for the prestigious Chaumont Poster Biennale.

Press + Public speaking

I’m really chuffed that world class platforms like Skoll, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Eye and the Huffington Post publish my writing.

Every now and then I do some public speaking. My favorite stages are at the Happy Startup School, Amani Institute and Acumen.

watch me in action

get updates on linkedin

If you’d like to follow along on my journey, Linkedin is the place. It’s where I share my brand-building experiments, micro-knowledge posts, requests for introductions and resources, calls for collaborators, invites for events, and the occasional rant.