Maybe the corporate life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be
Former RUG student Laurien Meuter has been named Alumnus of the year by the University of Groningen. She will receive the award after she quit her well-paid job in Amsterdam and started a foundation to lift a million people out of poverty. Meuter will receive her prize on September 6, during the opening of the Academic Year.
According to the jury, Meuter has made an impressive effort for the poorest women and their families in the slums of Mumbai. Her Tiny Miracles foundation aims to lift and keep one million people out of poverty, reports OOGTV.
“Meuter unites a number of qualities and values that we consider important as a university. She has a multidisciplinary approach and vision, has an eye for the international and local perspective, knows how to connect different worlds and is based on inclusiveness and equality”, the jury states in its report.
The Alumnus of the Year 2020 prize will be awarded during the Opening of the Academic Year on 6 September.
Meuter graduated in Economics and Corporate Finance from the University of Groningen in 2001 and then worked at ABN AMRO for ten years. However, Meuter changed course after working in Mumbai for a year. She was touched by the extreme poverty and degrading conditions in which street children live.
