Wim Kok - Early Life

Early Life

Willem Kok was born on September 29, 1938, in Bergambacht in the Netherlands Province of South Holland. After completing his studies in business at the Nyenrode Business Universiteit, he started his career in 1961 at the socialist Nederlands Verbond van Vakverenigingen (NVV), where he was chairman from 1973 until 1982. In 1982, the NVV merged with Nederlands Katholiek Vakverbond (NKV), the Catholic trade union, to form the Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging (FNV), of which he served as chair until 1986.

Read more about this topic:  Wim Kok

Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:

    “I could be, I discovered, by turns stern, loving, wise, silly, youthful, aged, racial, universal, indulgent, strict, with a remarkably easy and often cunning detachment ... various ways that an adult, spurred by guilt, by annoyance, by condescension, by loneliness, deals with the prerogatives of power and love.”
    —Gerald Early (20th century)

    “What makes saintliness in my view, as distinguished from ordinary goodness, is a certain quality of magnanimity and greatness of soul that brings life within the circle of the heroic.”
    —Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896)