Harrie Vollaard (pictured) has departed from his managing director role at Rabo Frontier Ventures (RFV), the corporate venturing arm of financial services firm Rabobank.
“After 25 years of working at Rabobank, I decided it is time to move on,” said Vollaard in a LinkedIn post. “I started as an IT trainee with a background in biochemistry. I never expected to stay that long with the bank!
“Thanks to the variety of roles and the bank always being at the forefront of innovation, I found it always an interesting and exciting environment. I have seen and experienced the whole history of innovation and transformation within the bank.”
Rabobank’s IT subsidiary, RaboFacet, hired Vollaard in 1997 as an IT trainee before promoting him to service manager and project manager positions.
Vollaard then spent more than 18 years in innovation management roles at the Netherlands-based bank, including innovation manager, head of innovation and head of fintech and innovation. His responsibilities included overseeing idea management, open innovation, trend watching and business IT strategy.
RFV took Vollaard on board in 2017 as managing director, a few months before the unit formally launched. Global Corporate Venturing included him on the 2020, 2021 and 2022 editions of its Powerlist.
Vollaard sat on the boards of various RFV portfolio companies such as agricultural e-commerce platform AgroStar, bank account checking service SurePay and Peaks, the provider of an investment portal for spare change. He has not disclosed details of his next steps.
