How to combine top sport and work? Meet our new pro Femke!
We speak to Femke while she is at training camp in sunny Leucate in southern France.
Could you please introduce yourself?
My name isFemke van der Veen, and I’m a professional windsurfer. For the past two years, I’ve been competing on the PWA World Tour, which is the international circuit where all the World Cups are held. Things are going better and better, and I think what’s unique is that I’ve managed to combine this with my studies. Last month, I graduated with honors in Biomedical Engineering from TU Delft.
You managed to combine your passion for sports and exercise in your thesis—can you explain how?
I find movement very interesting, especially how we can help athletes move even more efficiently. I’ve focused on speed skating in this regard: we have many skaters with different body types who still achieve the same speeds. How can we determine the ideal technique for each body type so that every individual skater can deliver top performance? In my thesis, I developed a framework to optimize skating technique for different individual characteristics, speeds, and skating conditions, performing more than 150 optimizations using a mathematical model.
How did you manage to combine these two goals, and what challenges did you face?
Well, first of all, I did a lot of planning and looked ahead so that I could focus entirely on the competitions abroad, and as soon as I was back in the Netherlands, I could shift my focus back to finishing my degree and working. That way, I was able to balance things out a bit.
You've finished your studies now, but you're not done juggling everything yet, are you?
Now that I’ve finished my studies, it’s time to grow in my role at ConsultAssistent while also focusing more on windsurfing. What I really love—and am very happy about—is that ConsultAssistent gives me the opportunity to arrange my hours flexibly to some extent. That way, when I have a training session, I can focus on it completely. When there’s no wind and I’m not out on the water, I can really focus on the work I do at ConsultAssistent. Another great thing is that I can work remotely. For example, I’m currently training abroad while also working for ConsultAssistent. That makes it easy for me to balance the two.
Can you explain what your job at ConsultAssistent entails and why it’s so easy to balance with other commitments?
I do two different things. The first is medical module development. That’s something I actually did from time to time even back when I was a student—I try to make questionnaires as efficient and clear as possible for both patients and healthcare professionals, with the goal of making healthcare more efficient. The second part of my work involves analyzing all the data collected from those questionnaires to see if we can identify certain patterns—using techniques such as machine learning—so that we can make predictions about, for example, the course of the patient’s disease or their prognosis. Artificial Intelligence is quite a hot topic, not only in healthcare but also beyond, so I find it very educational and interesting to work on this.
What do you like about working at ConsultAssistent?
In addition to the flexibility, I really appreciate being able to work independently—and to do so as part of a fun, enthusiastic, and motivated team. I also enjoy the fact that I’m not just focusing on my sport, but can learn a lot of new things outside of it as well.
What does the coming period look like for you?
Right now, I’m in the middle of a training camp in Spain and France. Then, at the end of April, there’s the first World Cup, followed by a few more at various locations. For example, we’ll be in the Canary Islands in July and August, and there are still a few World Cups on the other side of the world in the fall. There are also some exciting projects planned at ConsultAssistent, so it’s going to be a fun and challenging year that I’m really looking forward to!