Nettie Buitelaar started her professional career as a bioprocess engineer (Wageningen University) and worked in contract research in biotechnology for about 10 years. Then she changed towards the interface between science and business. After working in the Venture Capital industry she became the national director of the BioPartner program, established by the Dutch ministry of Economic Affairs to stimulate entrepreneurship in life sciences. After working for an international biopharmaceutical services company (Xendo) she now has her own company. Her main activities at present are: manager of the Leiden Bio Science Park, interim management in biotech companies, marketing support for biotech clusters, connecting start-ups to investors and more.