Nele Jacobs

Keynote Speaker / Mental Health Expert / CEO Faresa 

Nele is passionate about understanding and helping people struggling with mental health issues. Before the age of 10 she already knew she wanted to become a psychologist and she never changed her mind about it. On the contrary, she wanted to become a hyperperformant one, creating new, evidence-based care paths and solutions to help people in Belgium and beyond.

She finished her Masters degree magna cum laude at KULeuven in 2006. In 2008, she co-authored her first book on behavior change in cardiovascular patients. Nele completed her Master in Health Sciences: Health Policy, Economics, and Management at Maastricht University in 2009. Her research interest let to the completion of her PhD in Biomedicine in 2011 and her clinical interest let to the completion of a postgraduate in Behavior Therapy in 2013. With over 37 presentations at national and international conferences and 20 published articles in highly ranked international journals, Nele truely shows an academic track record. In 2022, Nele was elected President of the Board of Directors of the Flemish Association of Behavior Therapy (Vlaamse Vereniging voor Gedragstherapie, VVGT).

Nele is a female entrepreneur pur sang as she founded her own mental health company Faresa at the age of 26 while working on her PhD. Today, Faresa has 2 offices in Belgium (Hasselt, Brussels) and a team of 16 employees. At the age of 39, Nele ensured her first capital round to enable Faresa's further growth towards mental health tech. A group of private investors, business angels (BAN Flanders) and the investment company LRM support Nele to follow her dream to build highly effective AI-driven digital solutions to improve mental health. Nele envisioned technical solutions would become more important creating the first digital mental health tool focused on burn-out in 2013, evolving towards AI-driven products in 2023. 

Next to this, Nele enjoys distraction from all of this by spending time with her family. She focuses on cherishing her husband Frederick whom she started dating at the age of 15 and their 3 sons: Laurens, Vincent, and Maxime. Inspite of the fact that being a boys mom can be equally exhausting, all Nele needs to refuel is right there at home.