In 2006, Carolien Gehrels (57) is just a sports alderman in Amsterdam when the renowned Sandberg wing of the Stedelijk Museum is demolished in the context of an expansion. Gehrels, dressed in chalk stripe suit, grabs a brick and throws it through a window of the pavilion. If to say: the demolition can begin.
Not everyone is charmed. “Her performance and deed can hardly be surpassed in ordinaryness, in total misunderstanding of the past, in complete absence of respect for a large museum director,” writes Kees Fens, leading literature critic, in de Volkskrant. “For example, a building of the Gestapo is tackled or a rest of torture rooms – revenge discharges – but not a museum building that once was a creation of tone art.”
Job Cohen, then mayor of Amsterdam, finds the promotion typical of Gehrels, who is presented on Monday as the new chairman of the Ajax supervisory board. On paper, this is a modest function: supervising a listed company with the size of a solid SME company.
In practice, it is perhaps the most visible commissariat in Dutch business, especially if it is wrong, and with a large risk of excretion, her predecessors know. Gehrels is not awake, Cohen suspects. “She has guts and does things she likes,” he says. “Carolien has a bowl-but-on-position when she thinks she can do something and is looking forward to it.”
In conversations about Gehrels, her fearlessness is mentioned more often. With an almost challenging kind of cheerfulness, she approaches people and problems, say friends and former colleagues, and if that falls wrong, so be it. Criticism does not leave her cold, it sounds, but she does not care personally.
Who is Carolien Gehrels? What challenges will she be faced with as RVC chairman? And why did Ajax opt for her?
Korfball is part of it
Cornelia Gerdina Gehrels grows up with three brothers in a Protestant family in Flevoland. “Grandpa led the prayer for eating and grandma read from the Bible after eating,” says her niece Floor Gehrels. Gehrels mainly has the interest in debate and politics from her father. Johan Gehrels is in the municipal council of Dronten, in the late 1960s, early 1970s. First for CHU/ARP, later for the local CCP (combination of Christian parties).
In high school, Gehrels opts for exact subjects, but will eventually study Dutch language and literature in Groningen. Just like her, Bart Drenth is a member of student association Albertus Magnus and the two can agree. According to him, Gehrels is still driven by the “solid Protestant values” that her parents gave her: take responsibility for creation and society. According to him, you also have to see her membership of student korfball club De Parabool in that light. “In Protestant families, korfball is part of it.”
Sport was not her thing
Little is noticeable about affinity with football, let alone for Ajax. That is more or less forced to change in Amsterdam, where she finds a job as a consultant after her studies. Gehrels advises government institutions and municipalities and will come up with the idea at the beginning of this century to give cities an international profile via city marketing. The ‘I Amsterdam’ campaign will be a success under its responsibility.
Because of her close contacts with the municipality of Amsterdam, her appointment in 2006 as Alderman for Culture and Sport (PvdA) is no surprise. At the start, sport was “not even her thing,” says Henk Stokhof, who worked closely with Gehrels as Manager Sports for years, “but that huge her thing.”
According to Stokhof, Gehrels has warmed up the international sports world for Amsterdam by bringing all kinds of large events to the city. A lot of attention had been paid to the capital for a long time, under Gehrels, Amsterdam has also become a top sport city, he says.
And Ajax? Stokhof: “Ajax was very suitable for showing Amsterdam to the world. As a marketing expert, Carolien realized that very well. It was not love at first sight, but it grew later. ”
It is not immediately easy for alderman Gehrels. Her ideas regularly encounter resistance. Because there is no money, but also because she does not always sell it handy. In the Stopera she is known for a long time under the nickname Alderman Beautiful Plans. “There seems to be a gap between the image of Gehrels such as Wervelwind and the political reality, which is a lot more unruly,” writes Het Parool Three years after her arrival.
Handiness in dealing with the media also needs time. If they are during a tête-à-tête with a Ad-Journalist at the New Year’s reception says that she finds the IJmeer a nice place for a stadium, she reads her view a day later as news on the front page of the newspaper. The plan is immediately killed.
And then there is the receipt affair, in 2009. RTL News Requests the declarations of the Amsterdam city council for 2008. Six of the seven aldermen deposit money back, including Gehrels, who appears to have rented a saber for 35 euros and stab for a role like Napoleon in a play for officials and politicians. She finds the state of affairs unfair, she says in return for Het Parool, Because she rarely declares and pays lunches with journalists and entrepreneurs from her own pocket. “Because of 35 euros, I have been going around in the country for days like a grabbing bag filler. This kind of reporting leads to anxious politicians. ”
Despite her false start in Amsterdam, Gehrels knows how to achieve the portfolio of Economic Affairs, Art and Culture) in two terms as alderman (after culture and sport, she managed to achieve a lot. A Parool-Jury gives her an 8.2 for her last term in 2014, despite the fact that the renovation of the Stedelijk Museum was great delay and turned out much more expensive than budgeted. One of the jury members calls her ‘alderman Shit Happens‘, because everything went wrong in her files but Gehrels remained up without going through the dust.
She teaches that rapid solutions do not always work, that you also have to make the spirits ready for change. And she accepts that her will is not always a law. “I became more generous,” she says a year before her departure from local politics.
One of the highlights in her time as a sports alderman finds Gehrels de Giro d’Italia of 2010, who starts in Amsterdam. Gehrels was not the only Dutchman who was committed to that, says Angelo Zomegnan, former Giro director, but she was a pivot in the negotiations. He met her several times and typifies her like an “iron fist in a velvet glove”. She is personal, but also puts pressure where necessary. And she feels in detail where the possibilities lie. In this case: how she can present Amsterdam to the world and their own residents in a positive way through sport.
You can see something of that contradiction – iron in velvet – when visiting Russian President Putin to Amsterdam, in April 2013. It was the year before Russia annexed the Crimea. Putin prepared a much criticized anti-gay set. Deputy mayor Gehrels, married to a woman, replaced mayor Eberhard van der Laan-as a protest. She received Putin in high heels, so that she towered above him.
“She gets with cheerful mind in extremely thorny situations,” summarizes Maarten van Poelgeest, who in the same year as Gehrel’s alderman in Amsterdam. He calls her “a full holder,” but “not in a dramatic way.” In 2018 she will apply for the mayor of Amsterdam and wins according to A Parool reconstruction The support of the confidential committee, but lays down against Femke Halsema in the council mood.
Other powers in charge
Overcoming resistance, taking a risk, being aim of fierce criticism in the media – these are experiences that Gehrels can come in handy at Ajax. From a sporting point of view, the club is unexpectedly recovering from the dramatic last season under trainer Francesco Faroli, but the financial-administrative foundations are extremely shaky and conflicts are generally fought publicly.
One of Gehrels’ predecessors, Pier Eringa, recently found that an experienced driver. In the spring of 2023, Eringa started in the spring of 2023 as a president of the commissioner at Ajax. A failed transfer summer and moving dismissal of technical director Sven failed later, the former director of ProRail stepped under great pressure. Last spring, another three commissioners announced their departure early. Not the Supervisory Board and the management, but “other forces” are in charge of Ajax, Eringa concluded in an interview with NRC.
He referred to supporters, media (De Telegraaf) And especially the boarding council of the amateur association AFC Ajax (eight hundred members), very influential as a major shareholder of the listed professional club. As soon as the sporting performance is disappointing, the interference of the amateur branch is lurking and drivers and supervisors will come under fire. Even though they naturally have credit because of a past at the club, the so-called ‘Ajax DNA’, something that lacks Gehrels.
The search for a successor to ‘honorary member’ and clubman Michael van Praag, who temporarily took over the baton from Eringa and then bumped with the board of administrative, was therefore difficult. All the more because Ajax stands for a serious reorganization after years of growth and expanding expenses. That requires painful interventions, guts and vision, the departing supervisors realized.
After several candidates had been dropped out or were found to be too light, Gehrels came into the picture. How? The administrative council had already polled her before the summer whether she was interested in a role as a commissioner, appt chairman Ernst Boekhorst. In the conversations that followed, the conviction grew that she would be the ideal SB chair. For that role, the board of the board initially had another in mind, but the Supervisory Board did not agree with that. Gehrels is so viewed a compromise candidate, but one that can count – for the time being – at support within Proflub and Vereniging.
Ajax Ajax Achter Gehrels is suitable for its extensive experience as a director and affinity with sport, but also because of its large Amsterdam and international network. Since her departure from politics, she advises Arcadis Governments employed in the service and abroad on sustainability and urban development, while Ajax is currently working on the construction of a new, tens of millions of costs training complex.
Eric van der Burg, who in the second term of Gehrels in Amsterdam became alderman of sport, also points to the “extremely exciting” relationship between Ajax and the Arena, which he compares with that between KLM and Schiphol. Gehrels ” ‘cozy business’ style comes in handy, he thinks. “There I see a connecting role for her.”
An old director of the club says that she fits perfectly in the desired profile, but also warns that you really understand how complicated the force field is within the club, if you are in the middle of it. And: that it is extra difficult for a woman to gain authority in the conservative football world.
Words are weighed on a gold scale in such a high pressure environment, Van der Burg knows, and then a characteristic that is seen as strength – her humor – can become a pitfall. “A joke can have a relaxing effect, but also throw oil on the fire,” he says. “It’s a thin line.”
When she gets into trouble at Ajax, her former colleague Stokhof thinks, she is not the type that quickly won. “She is going down rather than to the knees. She has the mentality of a hard -hard defender. ”