Hi, I’m Marieke van de Rakt. I’m the Chief Growth Officer (CGO) at Yoast. From 2019 until 2021, I was the CEO and co-owner of Yoast. In 2021, we decided to sell Yoast 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 was to make sure that our company culture remains as inviting and inspiring as it has always been.
In my role as CGO, I am very much involved in how to tell our story and how to do our branding. Next to that, I am involved in creating our products (both the plugin as well as our online courses) and still do a little 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 will be launched in January 2023.
With my husband Joost I also invest in some other companies through our investment vehicle, Emilia Capital.