UCF Ambassadors

As UCF staff, we are - of course - very proud of our Global Responsibility & Leadership programme. However, we don’t stand alone in this! We’ve gathered a number of impressive UCF ambassadors who feel the same way. Get to know them:

Marjella Lecourt-Alma

Marjella Lecourt-Alma is the CEO and co-founder of Datamaran, the market leader in Smart ESG software. Datamaran is trusted by global brands to identify and prioritize ESG issues material to their operations, deepen their teams’ ESG knowledge, monitor risks and opportunities in real-time, and authentically own their ESG strategy in-house. The company has offices in London, New York, Valencia and Leeuwarden. 

Marjella leads a diverse team of ESG experts, data scientists, commercial executives, and technology professionals. She is globally recognized as a thought leader and is regularly featured in the media, including the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Economist, and CNBC’s Power Lunch.

She commissioned and directed the world’s first documentary on corporate sustainability and ESG, called the “New Heroes of Sustainable Business” which premiered at Climate Week NYC in 2023. The award-winning film amplifies the voices of business leaders who have gone beyond compliance and are championing a smart way to ESG. The documentary has been a lifeline to executives in charge of ESG for the first time, giving them the confidence to become sustainability heroes in their own right.

At 30, Marjella became the youngest female Director of the Global Reporting Initiative - the most widely used standard for measuring and managing ESG issues. She joined the GRI headquarters in Amsterdam in 2007 where she successfully set up the Services Department.

Marjella is also an Advisory Board Member and Ambassador to the Bachelor of Science Global Responsibility & Leadership program at Campus Fryslân - University of Groningen.

Jacques Buith

Jacques Buith, born and raised in Leeuwarden, Fryslan. Jacques is a senior Partner at Deloitte with more then 30 years’ experience in advising Global clients. Currently he serves as the Global Lead Partner for the United Nations and the Managing Partner for Risk Advisory within Deloitte North and South Europe (NSE). He currently serves on the Executive of Deloitte North and South Europe (NSE) and the Executive of Deloitte Global Risk Advisory.

In his global roles, Jacques is a senior advisor on the strategy and execution of transformational client, and priority market plans for Deloitte Risk Advisory. More specifically he is focused on growing the Sustainability practice and serving both UN / international donor organizations and private sector clients on the topics of Purpose, Strategy, Impact Assessment and SDG activation.

With more than 30 years at Deloitte in Risk Management, Governance and Regulatory, he has a wide experience in advisory and assessment roles. During his distinguished career in professional services he advised multinational clients in Financial Services, Technology, Media, Telecom, Industrial Products and Services and Automotive. Next to that he was the Project Advisor to the World Economic Forum on their ‘Risk & Responsibility in a Hyper connected World’ initiative for several years between 2011 and 2015.

Jacques is very interested in supporting UCF students in their journey by bringing the Consultancy and private sector experience into the projects. “I am committed to bring my experience in serving global clients and more specifically ‘the UN world’ into the class room. Embedding the UN SDG’s into the strategy of many organisations both locally, nation wide and globally is my main motivational driver.

Marc Flessa

Born and raised in Germany, from 2018 to 2021 Marc Flessa was a member of the first cohort of students in the Global Responsibility and Leadership program at University College Fryslân (UCF). For his Minor in Global Affairs he went to the University of Leiden. In 2023, Marc successfully graduated with a Master in International Relations from the Central European University in Vienna where his thesis, titled Governmentality of and in global climate governance: The experiences of non-state actors at the UNFCCC Conferences of the Parties (COP) passed with distinction. During this study time, he also spent a semester in New York City taking part in the Bard Globalization and International Affairs program, including an internship with the Clara Lionel Foundation.

After working as a Research Associate at the OSUN Hub for the Politics of the Anthropocene on the Foreign Policy Positions of Germany’s Green Party following the war in Ukraine, since May 2024, Marc is working as a Program Officer and Researcher for the CONVOCO! Foundation in Salzburg.

Marc is interested in a broad variety of topics, ranging from international affairs, security and diplomacy to economics, philosophy and sustainability. During his time at UCF, he has always been an active and engaged member of the UCF community and a proud alumnus. He is a passionate proponent of its multidisciplinary, small-scale university college education and believes that it provides young people with an optimal environment to acquire diverse knowledge and skills, discover various fields and hence develop not only academically and professionally but most importantly personally.

Max Eisenbart

Max Eisenbart, born in Germany but raised in different places across the Netherlands, is a Global Responsibility and Leadership Alumni, with a strong commitment towards sustainability education and circular economy. He believes that both education and the role of the region hold a key role in advancing sustainable development and the various societal transitions we are facing. 

After his studies at UCF, he stayed in Friesland to work for SPARK the Movement and the Circular Friesland Association. Next to this he is serving as European Youth Coordinator for the UN RCE-network and he is a companion of the EU Education for Climate Coalition.  

Already during his time at UCF he contributed towards the development of UCF and the campus, by serving in the Faculty Council and as the Student Assessor. Also after graduating he wanted to continue this commitment, as he strongly believes that the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary type of education that UCF offers is both unique in the Netherlands and highly necessary to address the challenges of our time. 

Somaye Dehban

Ms Somaye Dehban is the founder of Your Funding Network and CEO of Lattice Consultancy. She has concentrated her interest on issues related to her core values: equality, inclusion and diversity with a special attention to programs where transparency and sustainability are cross-cutting matters. Ms Dehban’s philosophy and life motto is “Sharing is Power”.

As a University College graduate herself, Ms Dehban was asked as representative from the "professional field" during the accreditation of the GRL programme and shared her views on the opportunities as well as challenges of entering the labour market after completing a University College education. “University College Fryslân has already envisioned various interventions to prepare UCF alumni for life after their bachelor programme. It is an impressive programme to be a part of!”