- at school, Dagmar Ottevangers (The Netherlands, 1973) was convinced that she would later be a great Civil Engineer in bridge constructions, and the boss of Greenpeace. However, the love for language (inherited from her grandmother, and gratefully shared with her) eventually led her to studies in Dutch linguistics. During these studies, she discovered the striking and fascinating similarity between natural and artificial languages, which triggered her interest in computer science.

Soon she realized that she wanted a job in computer science and that she would have to do it all on her own, as she had no time left to start a second study. She decided not to wait until her studies in linguistics were finished and applied for a job at ING bank as programmer trainee. The traineeship was extremely hard, as she lacked any former education in the field, but in the end she was hired. And in the same year she got her Ma in linguistics. Looking back, she would not recommend this shortcut, but it shows that you can choose to follow a completely different path if you really want to.

Right now, after having been in the IT field for ten years now, she is a Software Architect with Capgemini, a global organisation for consultancy, technology and outsourcing services. Her work has brought her to Mumbai (India) and to the heart of the EU in Brussels, where she lived and worked for a year in a project consisting of 15 different nationalities, and got the chance to give a presentation to the European Commission

Besides work, Dagmar has a passion for the arctic. She is planning on travelling through all countries on the arctic circle in the next five years and then as "grand finale" reach the magnetic northpole itself, by cross country skiing. She has already started with a visit to Spitsbergen. See also www.projectnorthpole.eu