Wieke Paulusma
Wieke Paulusma (born 5 December 1978) is a Dutch health professional and politician for the social liberal party Democrats 66 (D66), who has been serving as a member of the House of Representatives since the 2021 general election. She started her career as a nurse and also worked as a health care manager. Besides, Paulusma served on the Groningen municipal council between 2014 and 2021. Early life and career Paulusma was born in 1978 in Emmen, a city in the province of Drenthe, and grew up in the nearby village of Odoorn. Her parents were teachers, and they raised her in the West Frisian language. Paulusma has two younger brothers. She attended the secondary school Hondrus College in Emmen at vwo level and subsequently studied at the School of Nursing, part of the Groningen Hanze University of Applied Sciences. Paulusma was also trained in nursing at the HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht. She started her career as a district nurse for Thuiszorg Groningen, working there between 2003 and 2007. Paulusma then served as a partner at MAD Multimedia and a senior account manager at Storm Marketing Consultants. She returned to health care in 2011, working as manager at Thuiszorg Icare, and became a manager at the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) in 2013. She worked as a manager and project leader at Treant Zorggroep in 2017 before becoming a district nurse again the following year at TSN Thuiszorg. Between 2019 and her election to the House in 2021, she was a program manager at Ommelander Hospital and the UMCG. Besides her job, Paulusma has also been serving as the chair of the board of directors of the International Film Festival Assen (IFA) since 2019 and as the secretary of the three-person board of directors of Stichting Lutje Geluk, which makes it possible for financially strained families to go on trips, since its formation in 2018. Politics Local (2014–2021) She was inspired to go into politics by Els Borst, D66 leader and Ministers of Health, Welfare, and Sport, and joined D66 in 2012. Paulusma was elected to the Groningen municipal council in the 2014 municipal elections as D66's eighth candidate. She had decided to run for office because municipalities had been given more health care responsibilities, and she therefore deemed it necessary for people with experience in that field to be in the municipal council. Paulusma was one of the organizers of a G1000 conference, which was held in Groningen in June 2015. The conference about the city's future was attended by over 500 citizens, who had been chosen through a lottery, and it followed the concept of other G1000 conferences that had been held in Belgium and the Netherlands. Paulusma was also one of the initiators of a cooperative district council with members chosen through a lottery in her own district, the Oosterparkwijk. She had been inspired by a similar council in the London Borough of Lambeth. In the municipal council, she proposed making it possible for citizens to