Hillegonda Jager-Veenstra was born in Drachten, Friesland. After successfully completing the tourist training at Schoevers, she started working at the Accor group in Germany at Mercure as Junior Front office manager. In 1991 Hillegonda returned to the Netherlands and went to work at Postiljon as RD manager, in which capacity she introduced ISO 9001 there. Currently she is working as Quality Coordinator at Stenden hotel, the training company of the high hotel school. There she successfully introduced Green Key and ISO 9001. Hillegonda is the link between theory and practice within the knowledge circle.