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鈥淭here鈥檚 no golden thread to be found in my long career, says chemical engineer Henk Kivits with a laugh. In a lively conversation, he explains that he based his career choices on seizing opportunities to do new things with nice people. That approach took him from sewage sludge and blood to cable networks, television, casinos, musicals, and hospital food.

Anyone who talks to Henk Kivits realizes within a few minutes that he is an entrepreneur through and through. The former director/CEO of, in succession, an engineering firm, a multimedia company, a television station, Holland Casino, Stage Entertainment, the Efteling, a catering company, and several charities, peppers the story of his career with colorful anecdotes. About how he crisscrossed the Netherlands with a discarded satellite dish on a trailer, and how he eventually came full circle in his unpredictable career.

Heads or tails

Henk, who was born in Harderwijk, moved to Brabant when he was two and has been devoted to the province ever since. 鈥淗alfway through high school, we moved from Breda to Oss. That鈥檚 where I met my future wife, Marja, to whom I鈥檝e now been married for over fifty years.鈥� Together with a few others, he went from the Titus Brandsma Lyceum in Oss to Eindhoven University of Technology, TH Eindhoven at that time. 鈥淚鈥檓 still in touch with them. We see each other at least twice a year.鈥� The fact that he ended up in the Department of Chemical Technology was partly a matter of chance. 鈥淚 knew I wanted to do something in engineering and literally flipped a coin to decide whether it should be physics or chemistry.鈥�

Impromtu PHD

He came to Eindhoven to study, not to party. 鈥淚 just wanted to get my degree as quickly as possible and start earning money, since I had already gotten married before I graduated.鈥� Although he had already mailed out some job applications to various companies, he let himself be persuaded to pursue a PhD. 鈥淢y thesis focused on a method for recovering heavy metals from waste sludge from the port of Den Bosch. Since it involved waste processing, the method couldn鈥檛 be too expensive. A combination of oleic acid and cyclohexanone turned out to work. That cyclohexanone was an intermediate product in nylon production, sourced from DSM. This earned DSM a patent, and my thesis advisor Tinus Tels, my mentor Jan Lotens, and I each received one-ninth of the rights. I still have the certificate. For this research, I made use of, among other things, the cyclotron in the physics department. Henk Hagedoorn, who was a professor there at the time, asked me if I would like to pursue a PhD under his supervision on the practical applications of that cyclotron.鈥�

From particulate matter to cancer treatment

Henk鈥檚 entrepreneurial spirit soon took over. During the four years of his PhD research, he worked on a wide variety of topics, most of which he came up with himself. 鈥淲e took samples from the air-handling systems in the Main Building and detected particulate matter originating from power plants in Germany. Or we analyzed paint from old paintings to assess their authenticity.鈥�

A newspaper article in the Eindhovens Dagblad put him on the trail of the Moerman diet for cancer patients. Moerman was a doctor and pigeon fancier who had discovered that his pigeons seemed to recover from skin cancer when he fed them sulfur pellets. 鈥淚 had read in a scientific article that there was a link between blood selenium levels and cancer. Since on the periodic table selenium is in the same row as sulfur, I thought it would be interesting to study whether the Moerman diet affected blood selenium levels.鈥�

Outrage in the making

At the time, Henk was quite angry at the scientific community, he says. 鈥淭here was an alternative treatment that might have been helpful, and they wouldn鈥檛 even consider it. Doctors literally told terminally ill patients on the brink of death that they could no longer count on their help if they went to see that quack, Moerman.鈥� Some forty years later, this outrage motivated him to draw on his experiences at the catering company Maison van den Boer to found FoodforCare, which develops and supplies health-promoting food to hospitals.

Henks鈥� research held great appeal for students. 鈥淒uring those four years of my PhD, I had six graduate students and as many as twenty interns. The only downside was that we were only allowed to use the cyclotron after work hours for our 鈥榟obby projects.鈥� As a result, we had to do all our measurements in the evenings, on weekends, and on holidays. I picked up quite some kilos of Chinese food at the Woenselse Markt to keep everyone going.鈥�

Taking the leap

Toward the end of his PhD., people at DSM put him in touch with a Scotsman who wanted to start a business in telecommunications in Limburg. Wouldn鈥檛 that be something for Henk? 鈥淎nd that鈥檚 how I started the engineering firm Intercai in a field I knew absolutely nothing about. But that made it even more fun for me.鈥� Henk simply prefers to do things that no one has ever done before. 鈥淲ith every new opportunity that came along, I always asked myself whether I could make a difference with my knowledge and experience. And if the answer was 鈥榶es,鈥� I just leaped.鈥�

Playing with satellite TV

Throughout his career, Henk has returned to the 黑料福利网 campus on several occasions. 鈥淔or example, during my time at Intercai. The 1980 Olympics were held in Moscow. The Russians launched the Gorizont (Horizon) TV satellite so that people in every corner of the country could follow the Games. However, that satellite had far too much power; an acquaintance of mine in Lund was suddenly able to receive Russia 1 as well. Keep in mind, that was back when we only had Nederland 1 and 2 here, plus a Belgian or German channel in the border regions. Back then, in the electrical engineering department, they had a number of parabolic antennas set up behind the cyclotron. I picked up a decoder in Sweden, hooked it up to those parabolic antennas here, and then we were able to receive Russia 1 here as well. That was fun. So I went to the PTT 鈥� as it was called back then 鈥� where they still had some discarded satellite dishes lying around. I bought one for 250 guilders, mounted it on the back of a trailer, and drove all over the country, as well as through Belgium and Germany, to show what was possible with satellite television.鈥� With that initiative, Henk also caught the media鈥檚 attention. 鈥淔or example, I appeared on the 8 o鈥檆lock news broadcast from the TU campus with Vaclav Vokurka from the Department of Electrical Engineering.鈥�

From KLM to KPN

Through Intercai, Henk came into contact with KLM. 鈥淔or them, we conducted a project to investigate whether we could transmit the American newspapers they flew to Europe every day more quickly in digital form using photocopiers.鈥� KLM acquired shares in Intercai. Due to a series of acquisitions, these shares eventually ended up with KPN, among others.
Shortly thereafter, he was asked to set up a multimedia division at KPN to integrate mail and telecommunications. 鈥淏ack then, there were TV shows like the Soundmix Show, where people could vote by phone. That caused problems: during the show鈥檚 finale, the entire Dutch telephone network went down.鈥� That work at KPN led, among other things, to the founding of the Call Factory, in which Joop van den Ende played a key role.

Taking a gamble on a job application

The next venture Henk got involved in was Sport 7, with Endemol, Philips, ING, and the KNVB. That television channel, however, was short-lived. 鈥淪hortly afterward, I received a call from Jan de Soet, former CEO of KLM and the person who, as Intercai鈥檚 largest shareholder, had opened our new headquarters in Geleen in 1988. He was a member of the supervisory board at Holland Casino. They were looking for a chairman of the board there, and he asked me if I鈥檇 like to apply for that job. That was my first and only job application. I consider it my greatest achievement that I was able to make the 5,000 employees proud of that company again. The fact that we were the main sponsor of the Eredivisie helped a great deal in this regard.鈥�
At Holland Casino, he introduced theater tickets as an alternative to cash prizes. This brought him back into contact with Joop van den Ende, with whom he had already collaborated extensively during his time at KPN Multimedia. 鈥淛oop needed a successor as CEO at Stage Entertainment and invited me to come in for a chat. Those were wonderful but very intense years. Stage Entertainment operated from Moscow to New York 鈥� eight time zones apart 鈥� and business went on for seven days a week.鈥�

Back to food

When he was in his early sixties, Henk decided it was time to do something different. 鈥淭hrough Stage Entertainment and various side roles at organizations including PSV,  KNVB, and MECC, I had a lot of contact with the catering company Maison van de Boer. The family asked me if I鈥檇 be willing to serve as CEO there for a while.鈥� On his first day at the catering company, the operations manager told him about a pilot project they鈥檇 run for young cancer patients at Radboud Hospital. 鈥淭hey had asked food designer Annelies Hermsen from Eindhoven to develop a concept for tasty, nutritious hospital food that could promote good health.鈥� Henk was immediately transported back forty years in time, thinking of the cancer patients who would sneak into general practitioners鈥� waiting rooms more or less incognito because no one was supposed to know that they were trying to improve their chances of recovery through diet.
鈥淚f a hospital takes food seriously, you can do a lot for sick people through nutrition. With FoodforCare, we offer fresh snacks seven times a day, providing patients with 100 grams of protein per day. In addition, we conduct research through the FoodforCare Foundation. Several doctors and dietitians have now earned their doctorates on the effects of nutrition on recovery.鈥�

Full circle

Not only through this foundation, but also as far as 黑料福利网 is concerned, the enthusiastic entrepreneur has now come full circle. 鈥淚n 2017, I was asked by the university鈥檚 then-president, Jan Mengelers, to become chair of the university fund. I鈥檝e been doing that for nine years now, and I thoroughly enjoy it. The best part of my time as a PhD student was that people from all walks of life wanted to work together to achieve something. You see that same spirit at UFe, too. For example, I sense that same dynamic and drive in student teams as they join forces to tackle something no one has done before.鈥�
Although he went on to do completely different things after earning his chemistry degree, there is one course he has enjoyed throughout his entire career. 鈥淢ath 49. I could do calculations fast, and at THE I learned to think logically to a great extent. So as soon as someone at a board meeting started throwing numbers around, I could very quickly tell the difference between what did and did not make sense.鈥�

Seizing opportunities

Looking back, Henk is especially grateful for all the opportunities he鈥檚 been given and all the people he鈥檚 met on his varied journey. 鈥淚n fact, I鈥檝e pretty much always been my own boss. Of course I was held accountable, but I had a lot of freedom to do things my way. I鈥檝e often gone with my gut, and I鈥檝e never regretted that.鈥� That鈥檚 also his advice to young people just starting their careers. 鈥淔ollow your heart. If something comes your way and it appeals to you, just say yes 鈥� even if you can鈥檛 foresee all the consequences. Most things in my career just happened to me. But I did seize every opportunity that came my way with both hands.鈥�