Our Team

Ocean Exchange Team

Mare Straetmans

Founder, Platform Zero

My name is Mare Straetmans. I am passionate entrepreneur and intrapreneur in the world of maritime and energy.

Currently I am working on setting up the new oceans health business for Van Oord (a large innovative maritime powerhouse), launching new ventures with the Green Swan Partners and investing in maritime and energy start-ups. This is all fueled by my mission to bring innovation to the maritime and energy sectors, decreasing the impact for our planet of these sectors and offering young talent the opportunity to grow with exciting challenges.

All my motivation comes from creating new meaningful business with high impact. This business is based on the newest technologies with a clear link to the trends around the world in climate change, digitalisation & renewable energy.

Through my former roles as director for the digital transformation at Van Oord, the founder and managing director of PortXL, innovation manager at the Port of Rotterdam and involvement with many start-ups, my drive for business and planetary impact is obvious.

Contact Us

Ocean Exchange invites you to learn more about Awards Program, our ecosystem and success of our award winners and participants. Together, we can chart a powerful course to help ensure the future of our oceans and the Blue Economy.

“Ocean Exchange has a platform to enable people with information that they need to know about the ocean and then to showcase new technologies that are on the forefront of really helping the ocean and the planet.”

“The quality of the content and the people who are involved with Ocean Exchange is all high end.”

“Besides funding, Ocean Exchange provides access to a wide area network of incredibly talented people in organizations that really do just want to help people.”

“Ocean Exchange is really about helping the little guys grow and in so doing, helping the big guys be better ocean citizens.”

“Ocean Exchange seems to be much more focused on bringing to light under-capitalized, wonderful new technology ideas. And it’s all about two-way access to this new technology and to the people who can help with the experience to grow that technology.”

“Ocean Exchange is a force multiplier to enable sustainable innovation.”

“Ocean Exchange is a global, novel innovation forum that has a greater ability to attract a broader range of impactful stakeholders than any other event that’s out there.”

“Unquestionably, one of Ocean Exchange’s primary strengths is how it brings together people from different paths. That makes its event a delegator experience as well as experience for an innovator or awards nominee.”

“Ocean Exchange is entirely different from any of the other organizations that I’m involved in. It is about sustainable innovation. I think it’s also very different in the extremely broad range of stakeholders that it involves.”

“There’s nothing better than going to an event or engaging with people so you walk away and say, ‘Wow!’”