Executive Search · Organisation Development · Total Rewards
Equora Talent is the practice of Lucien van Lokhorst — a senior HR executive and head-hunter who has spent a career chasing one question: what actually makes organisations, and the people in them, work?
It has taken him further than he probably expected when he started out in Amsterdam. To Dubai, where he helped reshape how 9,000 people were rewarded and developed at one of the region's biggest banks. Into the middle of a merger between telecom giants. Into the guts of a not-for-profit that quietly keeps the internet running. And onto the ground floor of an AI company trying to figure out how to pay and retain talent nobody had quite hired before.
He has wired boardrooms and shop floors alike — leading HR for a billion-dollar energy business across five continents, then turning around and becoming the person on the other side of the interview table, helping companies find the leaders who will take them into their next chapter.
Lucien shows up when something needs to change. Not the easy kind of change — the kind where two cultures need to actually become one, where a pay structure that made sense five years ago suddenly doesn't, where a fast-growing company has outgrown the playbook it started with.
He is the person people call when “it's complicated” is the honest answer.
02 Practice
Strategic clarity paired with pragmatic delivery — a partner equally comfortable advising the C-suite and rolling up his sleeves to implement lasting change.
01
Partnering with boards and executive teams to secure senior leadership talent capable of driving long-term growth. Twenty-five years spent building organisations from the inside informs every brief, every shortlist and every conversation with a candidate.
02
Job architecture, operating-model design and post-merger integration — applied where two cultures need to genuinely become one.
03
Grading, benchmarking and reward structures that still hold up when the business strategy moves underneath them.
04
Senior partnering across EMEA, APAC and the GCC — because good HR looks different depending on where you are standing.
05
PRINCE2®, Agile PM, MSP and P3O certified. Transformation that arrives on time — and actually lands.
03 Selected engagements
Reshaped how roughly 9,000 people were rewarded and developed at one of the region's largest banking groups.
Financial Services · UAE
Reward and retention structures for an AI business hiring talent nobody had quite hired before. A Mubadala company.
Technology & AI · UAE
Organisation development inside the not-for-profit that quietly keeps the internet running.
Internet Infrastructure · Netherlands
HR leadership for a billion-dollar energy business operating across five continents.
Energy · Global
Two cultures, one operating model — integration work in the middle of a merger between telecom giants.
Telecommunications
He speaks Dutch and English fluently, gets by comfortably in German, and has spent enough time in Amsterdam, Abu Dhabi and everywhere in between to adjust accordingly.
The credentials are there to back it up — a master's in organisation sociology, an engineering background, a drawer full of certifications in change management and project delivery. But ask him, and he will probably tell you the real education came from being in the room when things got hard.
Education
Certifications
Languages
Sectors
05 Start a conversation
Not just on paper. Really. That is the question that has kept him curious for 25 years — and it is the one every engagement starts with. If something in your organisation needs to change, or you are looking for the leader who will take it into its next chapter, let's talk.