Tom Kortenbach-Dijkstra
Founder, TKD advisory

Based in Sydney

Tom Kortenbach-Dijkstra

I founded TKD advisory to bring rigorous, senior-level advisory to Australian non-profits, social enterprises, and government bodies. My work is built on almost a decade of senior experience across central government, public sector consultancy, and policy development — and on a methodology for strategic thinking that I've been developing and applying since 2018. My academic background is in political science and public management.

01

Government from the inside

I spent years working inside the machinery of government — as a policy advisor at the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, coordinating across ministries, European Member States, and with the European Commission; and most recently as strategic advisor to the Director-General of the Netherlands Enterprise Agency — one of the country's largest government agencies, responsible for supporting and enabling Dutch enterprises to innovate, grow, and internationalise. I understand how government makes decisions, where the pressure points are, and what a realistic proposal looks like from both sides of the table.

02

Strategy and problem definition

As a senior advisor at Berenschot — the Netherlands' leading public sector consultancy — I worked across six national ministries, two provincial governments, and seven municipalities. And in every project in cooperation with different government bodies. That experience taught me the most important thing an advisor can do: identify the actual problem right before starting to solve it. The organisations that made the most progress were the ones willing to question the assumptions they'd started with.

03

First Principles Thinking

In 2018, I co-founded the Factory for Innovative Policy Solutions, built around First Principles Thinking as a methodology for social innovation. Over the years, we developed and applied this approach across workshops and consulting engagements — helping organisations break down complex problems, challenge their assumptions, and build genuinely innovative solutions.

In 2026, I moved to Sydney with my partner. I established TKD advisory to bring that same approach to Australia's public and social sector — where the societal challenges are real, the organisations working on them are highly dedicated, and the demand for clear, senior-level strategic thinking is genuine.

But Australia is not the Netherlands.

The policy context is different, the sector structures are different, and the networks that matter here are being built, not inherited. I'm direct about that.

But there is something an outsider can do that an insider often cannot: ask the questions that stopped being asked years ago. Every system accumulates its own logic — ways of framing problems, defining success, deciding what counts as a realistic solution. That logic becomes invisible precisely because everyone inside it has stopped questioning it. An external perspective doesn't just add a fresh pair of eyes. It removes a set of assumptions.

That capacity — combined with direct experience at the level where government decisions actually get made, and a genuine commitment to the organisations working on social impact in this country — is what TKD advisory is built on.

If something I've written or said resonates with a challenge you're working on, I'd welcome a conversation.

→ Contact Tom → See how we work