Hi, I’m Marieke van de Rakt. I’m the former CEO at Yoast. I founded Yoast Academy and led Yoast through a successful transaction in 2021. They sold to Newfold Digital.
Growing a company is mostly great fun. At the same time, it can be rather challenging. As our team grew very fast in the last few years, we were forced to come up with different types of management structures. And, as a company grows, the culture of a company tends to change as well. One of my biggest challenges as a CEO at Yoast was to make sure that our company culture remains as inviting and inspiring as it has always been.
In all my role at Yoast, I was very much involved in how to tell our story and how to do our branding. Next to that, I was involved in creating our products (both the plugin as well as our online courses) and did a lot bit of writing for Yoast.com.
In a previous lifetime, I obtained a PhD in social sciences. You can find my dissertation here and my other publications here.
Currently, I am working on a platform for female empowerment and leadership skills: the Empowerwoment project. It launched in January 2023.
With my husband Joost I also invest in some other companies through our investment vehicle, Emilia Capital.
