1939 – 2008

Eckart Wintzen was, by his own description, a businessman who looked like a hippie. His passions were about the environment, and using technology to serve inter-human warmth. Ex’pression College was one of many businesses Eckart was a financial and intellectual patron of. He used his considerable creative efforts where he felt he could make the world a better place.

Eckart was born in a fishing village in Holland, and though he almost popped out while his mother was strolling on the beach, he restrained himself. Eckart went on to study math and physics at Leiden University, worked for 10 years for multinationals like Philips Computer Industrie and European Space Research, then established the information systems branch of the Dutch daughter company of American General Telephone in 1973. He bought the struggling company for 10 guilders in 1976 and renamed it BSO (Bureau voor Systeem Ontwikkeling or Bureau for Systems Development).

Eckart resigned in 1996 when BSO/Origin, with 10,000 employees and offices in 75 cities in 25 countries, merged with Philips, the place where he started. He then began Ex’tent (or “Eck’s tent”) meaning Eckart’s shack, a management and investment company that participates in a wide range of socially and/or environmentally responsible enterprises. Along the way, Eckart was instrumental in the success of Ben & Jerry’s Benelux and San Francisco’s Wired Magazine. In his own country, he was a proponent of fiber optics to the home, while inventing and bringing to market a highly sophisticated video telephone that enables top quality picture with real eye contact called the Eye Catcher.

In January of 1997, a chance meeting at a conference bumped Eckart into Gary Platt, they did the Vulcan Mind Meld, and Ex’pression was born. The rest, you might say, is history, but the history of Ex’pression has really just begun.