Jurriaan Middelhoff

Jurriaan Middelhoff (1984) is Ambassador-at-Large Youth, Education and Work for the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Jurriaan started his career in 2008 in The Hague at the Clingendael Institute of International Relations, and the Netherlands Ministry of Finance, working on the national and EU budget. He joined the Dutch Foreign Service in 2011, where he worked on financial and economic policy in the EU. He switched to the Sustainable Economic Development Department, where he worked on Private Sector Development, Public-Private Partnerships and the negotiations for the SDGs. On behalf of the Ministry, Jurriaan was account manager for several international partnerships of the government of the Netherlands with enterprises, such as Heineken, Unilever and Philips.

In 2015, Jurriaan was posted to Malaysia as Head of the Economic and Trade department at the Netherlands Embassy, and as Director of the Malaysian-Dutch Business Council. Here, amongst other things, he was active in promoting a more sustainable Palm Oil sector. In 2017, he became Deputy-Ambassador and Counsellor for Economic Affairs at the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Panamá. In this position he was founder and board member of the Holland House Panamá.

From 2020 to 2022, Jurriaan was the Regional Envoy for Stability in the Western Balkans, on behalf of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Based out of Skopje, and covering the six Western Balkan countries, Jurriaan headed a network of experts that focus on external influences, conflict prevention and ethnic tensions, Organized Crime, Migration, and Cyber Security.

In 2022, Jurriaan was nominated Ambassador-at-Large for Youth, Education and Work at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by the Minister for Foreign Trade and Development. In this position, his main focus is Africa and the Middle East.

Jurriaan studied European Studies and International Business at the Universities of Maastricht and La Sapienza, Rome. He holds a Master in International politics from Maastricht University and graduated Magna Cum Laude from the Master Political Communications at the University of Antwerp, Belgium.