Harold Goddijn (born April 23, 1960) is the

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

of the Dutch consumer/business electronics company

TomTom TomTom N.V. is a Dutch multinational developer and creator of location technology and consumer electronics. Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Amsterdam, TomTom released its first generation of satellite navigation devices to market in 2004. ...

since 2001.

Early life and education

He studied Economics at the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being ...

from 1982 till 1986.

Early career

Goddijn started his career with a venture capital firm. He then founded Psion Netherlands BV in 1989 as a joint venture with Psion computers Plc. In 1998 he was appointed Managing Director of Psion Computers and served on the Board of Psion Plc from 1998 to 1999. In 1999, Harold Goddijn left Psion and joined Palmtop Software.

TomTom

In 1991, Goddijn's wife

Corinne Vigreux Corinne Danièle Goddijn-Vigreux, commonly known as Corinne Vigreux (born 9 December 1964), is a French business executive and entrepreneur. She is a co-founder of the Dutch consumer electronics company TomTom where she has been Managing Director ...

left her position as sales director for Psion to help found Palmtop Software; a company that specializes in creating applications for portable pocket computers. Goddijn invested in Palmtop Software, building a partnership with the co-founders

Peter-Frans Pauwels Peter-Frans Pauwels (born June 1965) is a Dutch entrepreneur. In 1991, soon after he completed his studies in Business and Computer Science at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, he founded, with his former university mate Pieter Geelen, a company ...

and

Pieter Geelen Pieter Geelen (born 1964) is a Dutch entrepreneur. Geelen was born in January 1964 in Hilversum as the oldest child of the illustrator Harrie Geelen and the children's author Imme Dros. In 1991, he dropped off his Ph.D. research in Computer Scien ...

(who are still running the company with him today). Palmtop Software completely changed their name and their image and is now known as TomTom. In 2001, Harold was appointed Chief Executive Officer of TomTom, a role he has held ever since. During this time, he focused the business on developing navigation software, launching the TomTom Navigator in 2002. Next, Harold made the decision to move into manufacturing hardware solutions, launching the first TomTom GO in 2004. TomTom has gone on to sell more than 75 million navigation devices globally. Today, more than one billion people use TomTom technology every day. After licensing its digital maps to

Apple (company) Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

for its in-house maps app and signed a multi-year deal with

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber), based in San Francisco, provides mobility as a service, ride-hailing (allowing users to book a car and driver to transport them in a way similar to a taxi), food delivery (Uber Eats and Postmates), package ...

to provide it with digital maps, the company has been building up its map making tech that will work in conjunction with the numerous sensors appearing on cars today to enable

autonomous driving A self-driving car, also known as an autonomous car, driver-less car, or robotic car (robo-car), is a car that is capable of traveling without human input.Xie, S.; Hu, J.; Bhowmick, P.; Ding, Z.; Arvin, F.,Distributed Motion Planning for S ...

cars.

Other Commitment

He is chair of the Comité Ondernemerschap en Financiering, advising the Minister of Finance.

Personal life

Goddijn, who now lives in Amsterdam, is married to

who is Co-Founder and Managing Director of the Consumer Business Unit since 2008 at TomTom. The couple have two children studying at universities.

Sources

{{DEFAULTSORT:Goddijn, Harold 1960 births Living people Dutch chief executives in the automobile industry University of Amsterdam alumni People from Oegstgeest Self-driving car companies