Merel Kok

Financial Controller

Merel keeps FORWARD.one’s financial engine precise, compliant, and performance-ready, so the firm and its founders can scale.

Focus chips

Fund operations

Financial governance

Compliance & AML

Reporting accuracy

Background

Before joining FORWARD.one, Merel worked at MUFG, focusing on transaction monitoring, AML, and sanctions compliance. That experience refined her ability to operate in high-stakes, high-regulation environments where accuracy is non-negotiable.
During her studies, she worked at an administrative office managing a broad range of tasks, a practical foundation that gave her fluency across financial workflows, bookkeeping, and day-to-day operations.

Focus & Thesis

Accuracy, integrity, and operational excellence.

Financial control and compliance are performance levers. She brings structure, transparency, and discipline to a fast-moving venture environment, ensuring the firm’s commercial ambition is matched by rigor.

Supporting a commercially oriented venture team.

FORWARD.one demands high standards in everything it touches, and Merel ensures those standards are met. From fund administration to transaction oversight, she creates the systems that allow deal teams and founders to operate at full speed. She does not accept compromising on accuracy.

Committed to clarity and trust.

Her guiding values, honesty, doing what you say, and meticulous attention to detail, shape every interaction. She works with the mindset that reliability builds long-term trust across LPs, founders, and partners.