Jari van den Broek

Why this persona fits the audience

He works in a 5-person research unit at a 15-person think tank in Brussels, producing charts for briefs and presentations from survey data and government tables. He usually builds them in spreadsheets and slides, double-checking each output before circulation because the audience is policy-focused and detail-oriented.

• Age: 44
• Location: Brussels, Belgium
• Occupation: Policy analyst
• Income: EUR 63k
• Education: Master's degree
• Company size: 15 employees total
• Years in role: 8

“If the axis isn't labeled correctly, the whole story collapses, no matter how beautiful the colors are.”

Jari van den Broek, 44, is a seasoned policy analyst embedded in the intellectual machinery of Brussels. Born in Antwerp, he moved to the capital for his Master's in Public Administration at KU Leuven, driven by a desire to see quantitative rigor applied to real-world social issues. For the past eight years, he has served in a specialized 5-person research unit at a boutique think tank with a staff of just 15. In this environment, the margin for error is virtually non-existent. Jari is the department's de facto data guardian, responsible for transforming raw, messy government tables and survey results into the polished charts that underpin the organization's influence. His daily reality is a cycle of ingestion, processing, and validation. He navigates complex datasets from Eurostat, the Belgian National Bank, and various ministry archives, often finding inconsistencies that require hours of manual correction. While the rest of the organization focuses on the narrative, Jari obsesses over the foundation. He builds his visualizations entirely within the Microsoft Office suite, specifically Excel and PowerPoint, mastering intricate formulas to automate what little he can. However, the manual nature of his work—copy-pasting data, adjusting scales, and reformatting legends—consumes a disproportionate amount of his energy. This reliance on legacy tools creates a bottleneck; when deadlines tighten, the fear of a formatting error keeps him awake at night. Financially, Jari earns EUR 63,000 annually, a solid income for Belgium but modest given his high level of education and the cost of living in Brussels. He and his wife have calculated their finances down to the cent, prioritizing their children's future education fund over discretionary spending. He views technology not as a toy but as a tool that must earn its keep through sheer reliability. Recently, he rejected a subscription to a generic design platform because it lacked the granular control required for policy briefs. Instead, he continues to refine his spreadsheet macros, hoping to shave ten minutes off his weekly routine. He is a man who believes that the integrity of public policy rests on the precision of the smallest detail, and he would sooner work until midnight than submit a report with a single unverified figure.

Background & daily life

A day in their life

Jari wakes at 6:30 AM, making coffee and scanning the morning news headlines for any sudden shifts in EU regulatory news. By 8:00 AM, he is at his desk in Ixelles, immediately diving into a massive CSV file from the Federal Public Service. He spends three hours wrestling with mismatched columns and outlier detection in Excel, muttering about inconsistent data entry protocols. After a quick lunch of a sandwich and an apple, he begins drafting the visual components for the afternoon briefing. He meticulously adjusts font sizes and color palettes, ensuring every bar aligns perfectly with the grid. A meeting at 3:00 PM involves reviewing a draft with his director, where he defends a specific data visualization choice. He leaves the office at 5:30 PM, takes the tram home, and helps his son with math homework before the family settles down for dinner.

Lifestyle

Jari lives in a renovated 19th-century townhouse in Ixelles, sharing it with his wife, Sarah, and their two school-aged children. Their evenings are structured around homework, dinner, and quiet reading; weekends involve long bicycle rides through the Ardennes or visiting museums to educate the kids. Financially, they are comfortable but not lavish, prioritizing savings for the children's university funds over luxury travel. Jari maintains a strict separation between work and home, rarely checking emails after 7 PM, though he often mentally reviews data anomalies during his commute. He values health, jogging twice a week despite his age, and finds solace in the predictability of his neighborhood routine.

Work life

At the think tank, Jari operates within a tight-knit unit where every chart carries weight. His day is dominated by cleaning raw datasets from Eurostat and Belgian federal tables, then manually constructing visualizations in Excel and PowerPoint. The pressure stems from the need for absolute accuracy; a misplaced decimal point can undermine a brief sent to ministers. He spends hours cross-referencing sources and formatting axes to ensure they meet the rigorous standards of policy wonks. Coworkers respect his precision, but his perfectionism sometimes slows down the team's output. He manages the relationship between raw numbers and narrative, acting as the gatekeeper of truth for their 15-person organization.

Relationships

Jari is deeply connected to his immediate family, who rely on his steady presence. At work, he has a symbiotic but tense relationship with the unit director, who pushes for speed while Jari demands verification. He has a small circle of friends from university days, mostly academics and civil servants, with whom he discusses politics over coffee. He is influenced heavily by his former professors and senior colleagues who instilled the ethos that 'numbers do not lie, but people do.' He avoids office gossip, preferring professional boundaries, and feels most respected when his technical contributions prevent policy errors.

How they decide

Jari is a cautious, evidence-based decision-maker who relies on peer validation and historical precedent. He resists impulsive choices and prefers to gather all available information before committing. If presented with a new solution, he will test it against his existing mental models of reliability and efficiency. He is skeptical of marketing claims and looks for concrete proof of utility, often seeking case studies or user testimonials from trusted industry peers before considering any significant change to his workflow.

How they sound

His speech is measured, precise, and devoid of slang. He uses formal Dutch and French interchangeably depending on the context, often switching mid-sentence if the other person responds in the other language. He avoids hyperbole, rarely using words like 'amazing' or 'disaster,' preferring 'significant' or 'problematic.' He speaks in complete sentences, often qualifying his statements with 'based on the data' or 'statistically speaking.' He does not interrupt, listens intently, and pauses frequently to formulate accurate responses rather than rushing to fill silence.