Gertjan Filarski studied Business Economics, Management & Law at the University of Applied Sciences in The Hague and graduated in 1999. He started as an entrepreneur in 1996 and ran several companies developing IT infrastructure in the finance, publishing and the public sectors. In 2004 he left commerce and studied Medieval History at Leiden University. He graduated in 2008. Gertjan became technical manager of twenty engineers dedicated to humanities research at the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands in 2010. The IT department merged with software development teams at the Meertens Institute and the International Institute for Social History in 2018. The combined group is almost forty engineers strong and the academy appointed Gertjan as its first director. He is a member of the board of the KNAW Humanities Cluster and combines his work with the role of Chief Technology Officer and board member for CLARIAH-NL. In his free time Gertjan loves storytelling, folk and fairy tales, and likes trekking through remote wildernesses. For the latter he lives in the wrong country.