General (RET) Tom Middendorp was The Netherlands Chief of Defense for five and a half years and spent 38 years serving his country. He commanded soldiers on all levels, led a large multinational taskforce in the south of Afghanistan and was involved in over twenty different military missions as the Director of Operations. Tom led the Defence organisation through an intense period of transition and has extensive operational and strategic experience of building unity of effort with different nations, governmental and non-governmental organisations, international institutions, and civil stakeholders in order to deal with a wide range of security risks. After ending his military career, he became a Senior Strategic Advisor on the areas of climate and security, defence and strategic leadership. He joined The Clingendael Institute as a Senior Visiting Fellow, is attached to The Hague Center for Strategic Studies as a Strategic Security Expert and became the Netherlands’ Special Envoy on European Defence Cooperation. In 2019 Tom Middendorp established – and was appointed as the Chairman of – the International Military Council on Climate and Security (IMCCS). In 2021 he published his first book on Climate and Security. During the COVID-crisis he led several national public-private cooperation programs to establish a nation-wide COVID testing network. Tom also supports several start-up innovations on the area of climate change and is a well-known guest speaker at summits and meeting.