Menno van der Winden is Vice President Digitalization at Umicore, based in Brussels, where he has held executive responsibility for digitalization since 2023.

He has focused on shaping and scaling digital initiatives across the organization, working at the intersection of business operations, technology, and change. His role centres on translating strategic ambitions into concrete digital capabilities, while dealing with the practical constraints of legacy systems, data availability, and organizational adoption. This work has involved close collaboration with both corporate and operational teams, with an emphasis on realism, governance, and long‑term value rather than short‑term experimentation alone.

Between 2016 and 2023 Menno was responsible for digitalization at Tata Steel in the Netherlands, where he worked extensively on advanced analytics and early AI‑driven use cases in a large‑scale industrial setting, laying the groundwork for his later focus on data‑ and AI‑enabled transformation.

Menno lives between Belgium and the Netherlands and commutes regularly between Brussels and his home base in Leiden. Outside of work, he maintains a broad interest in sports and current affairs and values time spent with family. His professional focus remains on embedding digitalization responsibly and sustainably into complex industrial environments.