Employee Spotlight: Anouk Wolters
Meet Anouk Wolters, AI Project Lead at KickstartAI. With a background in Complex Systems Engineering & Management, she brings a strong socio-technical perspective to AI: connecting technology, people, and processes to create impact where it matters.
Let’s dive into her journey into the field, what drives her work, and how she helps turn AI into solutions that support the people who use them.
What’s your role at KickstartAI?
I’m an AI Project Lead and I work closely with our partners and our internal engineering team to implement AI solutions.
My role is really varied, which is one of the things I enjoy most about it. Some days, I’m shadowing end users of the AI products we’re building to better understand their workflows and identify where AI can genuinely help. Other times I’m working on roadmaps to get everyone aligned and involved early on. And I spend a lot of time with engineers, figuring out the technical approach and making decisions on how we move forward.
What’s your background?
I studied Complex Systems Engineering and Management at TU Delft, focusing on navigating complex environments with different stakeholders, organizations, and technical challenges.
My interest in AI started during my master’s, when I organized a large conference about the impact of AI on the workforce. That’s when I got curious about what it really takes to create impact with AI, but also how to do that responsibly.
I ended up writing my thesis on introducing a socio-technical perspective into machine learning projects – so not just looking at the technical side, but also on how you embed it in processes, involve the right people, and organize governance.
After that, I worked for a couple of years at a startup building an AI governance platform, and I’ve been at Kickstart AI since November 2025.
What drives you in your work?
What really drives me is making sure AI actually serves the people who end up using it. I find it really motivating when you work closely with end users, understand what would genuinely make their lives easier, and then build something they’re happy with and that truly helps them in their day-to-day work.
That becomes even more meaningful to me when there’s a broader societal purpose behind it beyond a business benefit. A good example is a project I’m currently leading at Leiden University Medical Center, where we’re helping nurses reduce their workload while also improving wound care. Knowing that the work can make a real difference in a setting like healthcare is incredibly rewarding.
And that’s also one of the things I really like about working at KickstartAI. We have a close and knowledgeable team with a very open atmosphere, and at the same time we get to work in environments where there’s real room to create tangible impact with AI.
What do you think is the impact of our projects in the Dutch AI ecosystem?
That’s a big question. I think our impact is really significant, because we work closely with close partners that are major players in Dutch society. Through those collaborations, we work on projects that can have a real impact – both for their organizations and for society more broadly.
What also makes that impact bigger is that we bring together experts from different partners, each with their own perspectives and expertise. That helps us build better, higher-quality solutions than you would if you worked in isolation.
What qualities do you think an AI lead needs to have?
I think first of all, you need to be able to communicate with a lot of different types of people and explain technical concepts in a way that’s easy to understand.
Another important quality is being able to think in systems – not just the technical system itself, but the broader socio-technical system it is part of. So really being able to connect the dots between the technology, the people, the processes, and the organization, and then translate that into concrete steps to actually bring technical solutions to life!
Fun fact about you?
I’m always optimizing my route from A to B. For example, I figured out the fastest route from our office to the lunch canteen, and I was surprised that people who’d been there much longer than me didn’t know about it.
💡 Want to learn more about KickstartAI and our mission to accelerate AI adoption in the Netherlands? Check out our website, explore our open positions, or connect with Anouk on LinkedIn!
