About the Internet Society 

Board of Trustees

2000 Board Election

Candidates

Nina Brink <Nina@worldonline.nl>

Nominated by: Jan Prins <jan@isoc.nl>
Country: The Netherlands

NINA BRINK, EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN, WORLD ONLINE INTERNATIONAL

Nina Brink founded World Online International (World Online) in 1996 with a vision to create the first pan-European Internet service and content provider. Today, just three years later, the broad framework of her ambitious strategy is in place.

With its headquarters in the Netherlands, World Online has operations in 15 countries. It is expected to have over 1.2 million active individual users and 30,000 business customers by the end of 1999, and it is one of the fastest growing Internet Communications Companies in Europe.

Ms. Brink has convincingly demonstrated a great ability to attract support and enthusiasm for the World Online concept from many arenas and to drive the rapid implementation of her business plan. She has secured hundreds of millions of dollars in equity financing from multinationals like the Sandoz Family Foundation, Telfort, Reggeborgh Beheer and Intel.

She has also forged strategic partnerships and alliances with industry leaders such as Shell, Netscape, Ahold, Microsoft, Sun, Bertelsman, Oracle, McDonalds and Vodacom (South African affiliate of Vodafone).

In addition, Ms Brink has signed joint venture agreements with key telecommunications authorities and broadcast companies and has overseen the construction and ramp up of a state-of-the-art technical infrastructure delivering top-rate Internet connection and access. Finally, Ms Brink has managed to successfully assemble a world-class workforce, management team and board of directors.

The company's tremendous success represents a combination of entrepreneurship and vision. Ms. Brink recognized at an early stage the potential of the European Internet market. She saw that rapid technical advances would create a need for Internet service provision which was at once strongly branded and custom tailored to a wide variety of content and applications. Her vision was a pan-European branded service that could provide businesses and individuals with the full range of benefits and services offered through the Internet. News, information, e-mail, e-commerce and entertainment could be delivered to individuals. Internet services like transaction support, website design, set-up and hosting, communications services, employee training, virtual private networks and Intranets, as well as customer relations programs, could be offered to business customers. Ms Brink acted boldly based on her belief that Europe could be approached as a single opportunity, despite differences in national languages and customs. As a result of these actions the World Online brand proposition is unique in the industry.

While it presents a single and coherent face and a common approach to content and service provision across Europe, World Online has separate editorial operations in each country which provide localized content and address local issues, all in the local language. In every market, the World Online brand stands for superior pan-European and localized content presented in a standardized, well-designed format, all at an affordable price.

World Online currently runs local operations in the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, UK, South Africa, Germany and the Czech Republic. In France, World Online was the first to deliver free Internet access in co-operation with telecommunications operator Bouygues and television channel TF1. Sweden, Norway and Austria are next on the list. In addition, the rapid pace in Europe has encouraged the company to consider other areas where the brand could prosper. Most recently World Online formed a joint venture with VodaCom, the South-African affiliate of Vodafone.

Nina Brink is the personality behind World Online's rapid start up and early success. She is a well-known and highly respected member of the European business community. Ms Brink has been active as an entrepreneur and a leader in the information technology industry since 1975, when she founded Akam International, and later A-line, leading distributors of information technology products and value-added services. She has been a member of the advisory board of the Post and Telecom Council of the Netherlands Government and is on the board of a large number of leading international companies including First Mark, The European Technology Fund, VodaCom and World Merchandising. In addition, Ms Brink was recently elected Entrepreneur of the year at Telecom 99 in Geneva. Ms Brink is married and has a daughter.