Speakers

Mr. Sander Oude Hengel is the Defense Cooperation Attaché at the Royal Netherlands Embassy in the USA. Additionally, he serves as the chair of the Defense MoU Attachés Group (DMAG) in Washington, DC - a group of defense professionals from the 28 nations that have Reciprocal Defense Procurement Memoranda of Understanding (RDP MoUs) with the U.S. The DMAG promotes reciprocal defense equipment cooperation and defense trade with the U.S.

He began his career as a policy advisor on Afghanistan at the Netherlands Ministry of Defense (MoD) and was deployed there several times. He subsequently became the team leader for the Afghanistan and Africa desks, and in 2015, he became the head of the non-proliferation desk. Later, he was assigned as a strategic advisor at the Directorate-General of Policy, advising the leadership on defense materiel and industry policy in the European and trans-Atlantic context.

Sander holds bachelor's degrees in maritime engineering and history, and a master's degree in the history of international relations from the University of Amsterdam. In 2022, he completed the international training course Session Européenne des Responsables d’Armement (SERA) in Paris, focusing on international acquisition and armaments cooperation.