Johan joined ISRIC in 2009 as a Soil Legacy Data Officer for GlobalSoilMap.net, Africa Soil Information Service (AfSIS) and later the WoSIS projects. More recently, Johan has been focusing his work at ISRIC on soil fertility projects. His expertise is in soil science, agriculture, geo-information and Africa. 

Johan graduated from Wageningen University with a specialization in soil survey and land evaluation. Since then, he has been involved in soil and land resources projects and has worked for public organizations and commercial companies. The emphasis of his work has been on sustainable soil fertility management in semi-arid conditions and watershed- and natural resources management, for which he conducted numerous land-use system analyses at various scales applying GIS, database and crop growth modelling. He worked in the Netherlands, Belgium, Jordan, Iran, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso and Colombia. 

He left ISRIC in 2025.

Johan speaks Dutch, English and French.