My story: Will

Staying true to feelings of the heart.

Always been a firm believer of following your gut; this meant that I stayed on in Bristol after my studies, where I met Hugo through Bristol’s music scene.

I worked my way up in data and analytics from Bristol to London, learning from the differences across organisation sizes and cultures. I then visited Amsterdam for a music festival back in 2018, and immediately fell in love with Dutch culture. I realised I didn’t have much time before Brexit was signed into law, so 3 months later I relocated to Amsterdam with Booking.com and was promoted into a managerial role, looking after a team of analysts who were responsible for our global offices.

In 2021 I nearly died after falling 5 storeys onto the pavement. I was in a wheelchair for the best part of a year, and initially it looked like I’d never walk again. Through perseverance and a lot of physio, I recovered as much as possible, and am now happily cycling, dancing and even skiing! I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, but I learnt a lot about myself and am really proud of my resilience during the toughest time of my life.

No matter what was going on, I kept my head up and kept pushing through, always focussed on improvement rather than mourning any losses.

After the physical rehabilitation came the re-integration back into my previous life; I realised that I had pursued data & analytics to a very high level, but it wasn’t where my heart was. I met a wonderful dutch woman whom I’m proud to now call my wife, and she’s encouraged me to follow my passions.

I have some experience professionally renovating shipping containers into offices and schools, and privately have always been good at working with my hands  - for example I bought a van a couple of years ago and converted it into a campervan from scratch.

As with Hugo my passions are for people and music, and I love building things so I can’t wait to make our dream of building a music community come true!