About me

I’m Marieke van de Rakt. I am Group Head of Brand & Community at Your.Online, a European group of hosting brands. Together with my husband Joost, I am a partner at Emilia Capital, our investment company.

A little more about my work
Marieke sitting on a green sofa, wearing a pink blazer
Marieke van de Rakt
Marieke taking a selfie in an empty lecture hall
In the classroom at Fontys.

Teaching

I teach online marketing at Fontys University of Applied Sciences in Venlo. I love being in front of a class. AI is changing how students learn and how we teach. I write about that on this blog.

Read about teaching & AI

Local politics

I am a council member for PRO Wijchen, in my hometown Wijchen.

Captain Planet
Foundation

I am a member of the Board of Advisors of the Captain Planet Foundation.

Yoast

I co-founded Yoast. From 2019 to 2021 I was its CEO. After the sale to Newfold Digital, I stayed on until 2023. Growing a company is great fun, but it can be hard too. As Yoast grew fast, we had to keep finding new ways to organize ourselves. My biggest challenge was to keep our culture as inviting and inspiring as it had always been.

Research

Before all this, I obtained a PhD in social sciences. You can find my dissertation here and my other publications here.

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