Jenny Venema
Jenny has worked at Tata Steel for twenty years. She leads a research group within Research & Development, focused on the application of steel — how it is used, where its limits lie, and what changes when processes are adjusted. The work is technical, but never isolated. A change in one place reverberates throughout the system.
Alongside her role, she is chair of a union for professionals. That dual position places her between policy and people, between decisions and consequences. It means carrying responsibility without always being able to determine direction.
The announced reorganisation makes that tension tangible.
“We are facing the largest technological transition in a hundred years,” she says, “and at the same time we are reducing our workforce here by forty percent.”
That was the planned reduction at the time of the interview.
Colleagues she had worked with for years found themselves uncertain about their future. Decisions made at a higher level landed in conversations she had to conduct — often without having all the answers.
“Sustainability is not a quick fix,” she says.
It is a long-term process, in which cutting back and renewal rarely move in sync.
Jenny lives in the region. Her children grow up here. The factory is not an abstract system, but part of the everyday landscape.
“I live here with my children too,” she says.
What happens inside the gates does not stop there.
Her position is therefore inevitably tense. She stands in the middle of it — between ambition and limitation, between commitment and doubt.
Not because she seeks distance, but because distance is not an option.