Since 2008 Frans-Anton Vermast MBA (1969) has been Strategy Advisor and International Smart City Ambassador for Amsterdam Smart City and Chief Technology Office of Amsterdam, winners of iCapital 2016. 

He is a global expert in searching for opportunities for novel appliances and services that make cities and their regions an inclusive society and a more habitable place for people to live, work and play in pleasantly. 

Next to a strategic and broad general knowledge and experience in this field for almost 20 years Mr Vermast specialises in citizens engagement and governance- and finance models to facilitate collaboration in a quintuple helix. 

As the main question should be ‘What city do we want to live in?’ and cities are about “ECO systems and ego systems”1, he concentrates on helping cities facilitate their (digital) transitions via open innovation platforms as well as cross silo approaches. 

“Innovation is about doing and learning by doing”2. Therefore, Mr Vermast is not afraid to share failures and lessons learned to prevent other cities making the same mistakes Amsterdam made. 

His objectives are to facilitate social innovation and a sustainable-liveable environment to boost social and economic benefits based on open data and open algorithms. Ethics, gaining (back) trust of citizens and ownership of data to citizens are important topics he focusses on too. Mr Vermast is very interested to elaborate on these themes and to learn from others. 

Furthermore, Mr Vermast has extensive Dutch, European and global knowledge and extensive experience in facilitating the participation of several local-, regional- and national governments in Europe, the Middle East, Peoples Republic of China, Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and is frequent visitor to Australia. 

In addition, the private sector regularly calls on Mr Vermast his opinion and advice; this includes big consultancy firms, communication incumbents and NGO’s, local SME’s and start-ups. 

Mr Vermast had the privilege to be a jury member for the European Capital of Innovation 2018. 

He is a visiting speaker at Leiden University and Radboud University Nijmegen and a guest lecturer at the Universities of Applied Sciences of The Hague and HAN. Mr Vermast is experienced in national and international training both professional and as a volunteer with political parties. 

Mr Vermast is also a sought-after facilitator, moderator and day chair for conferences, strategy sessions and workshops.