Timo der Weduwen (the Netherlands)
OSHP Programme Director
Timo combines a background in education with a long career in international crisis and critical incident management.
With a bachelor degree in education, he joined the Netherlands Police in 1987, graduating from the Netherlands Police Academy in the rank of police inspector in 1991. In the years thereafter, he worked in increasingly challenging positions in the police services of Utrecht and Amsterdam, dealing with community policing, public order, organized crime and hostage negotiations, being appointed in the rank of police commissioner as managing director of the Police Academy in Amsterdam and The Hague in 2001.
During his tenure with the Netherlands police services, Timo dealt with numerous critical incidents, especially in the field of civil unrest, mass public events, crisis-interventions, and kidnapping incidents. In 1996, Timo certified in the UK National Hostage Negotiation Programme as a hostage negotiator; he has been active in that field ever since. He negotiated numerous crisis interventions, hostage takings, kidnappings and extortion incidents, expanding his experience later in his career when working abroad, directly managing negotiations with transnational organized crime groups and terrorist organizations.
In 2004, Timo left the Netherlands for a position as Executive Officer with the EU Police mission in North-Macedonia. Later, he worked for the EU in Ukraine as Head of Security for the EUBAM Mission, and in 2006 joined the United Nations. He worked as a security advisor in Israel and Palestine and Somalia and as a security risk management director in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and Westbank. During his tenure as chief of training for the UN security organization UNDSS, he traveled with his team around the world, delivering training in security management, hostage incident management and crisis management. Timo has used his background in education to encourage competency-based learning, designing and implementing specialist learning programmes, aimed at the upper levels of both knowledge and skills domains.
In 2018, Timo joined Prosectra as Associate Partner. He is the programme director of the Critical Incident Management Programme CIMP™ and the Kidnap for Ransom Incident Management Programme KRIM™. Timo is active as a critical incident management responder and continues to support organizations around the world in managing crises, critical incidents and kidnapping incidents. He lives with his family in Sweden.
