Behavioral Industrialist | Strategic Executive Advisor | Conscious Capitalist

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Benji Coetzee is a Forbes Top 60 Women in Tech honoree, CNBC Africa trailblazer, and Entrepreneur Magazine Top 50 Woman to Watch. She is the author of Daddy Says No — named one of the Top 100 books of 2022 — which challenges readers to make braver decisions for more meaningful lives.

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Currently Chief Strategy & Growth Officer at KPN, the Netherlands’ listed €6B telecom and digital infrastructure leader, Benji advises the CEO and board on value creation across M&A, ventures, portfolio design, and new business models. She is the youngest female EVP in the company’s history.

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Benji’s career spans four continents and multiple industries — from strategy consulting and investment banking (BCG, HSBC, Singular Group) to founding and exiting AI-powered logistics and insuretech ventures (EmptyTrips and SureCargo, both acquired in 2019). She’s led digital transformation at VodafoneZiggo, delivering platform-scale change across B2B and B2C commercial domains in the Netherlands.

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As a Venture Partner at Calibre Capital, she champions early-stage investments with societal upside. She also leads the Calibre Scout Network to accelerate the identification and scaling of high-impact ventures. Whether in personal or professional capacity, she backs positive brands that deliver returns beyond the balance sheet.

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An intentional and elastic thinker, Benji identifies as a behavioral industrialist — blending platform strategy, behavioral science, and systems design to influence better decisions at scale. Her approach is pragmatic yet provocative: shape the agenda, stretch the system, and serve a future worth inheriting.

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She holds two Master’s degrees (LL.M in Corporate Finance from Goethe University, and M.Phil in Maritime Economics from Stellenbosch University), along with certifications in data science (Johns Hopkins), behavioral economics (JBS), and executive innovation (Singularity University). She is currently pursuing a PhD in behavioral psychology.

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Benji continues to advise executives and boards on innovation, culture, and strategic transformation — always with one goal: sustainable momentum built on human insight and intelligent systems.

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Keywords: Strategy, M&A, Growth, Digital Transformation, Behavioral Design, AI, Innovation, Impact Investing, Venture Building, Executive Advisory, Public Speaker, Author.