About Maister
Built by people who build.
Maister was founded at the intersection of technology, learning and advisory. Companies do not need more AI theory — they need practical skill and the structure to turn it into a business result.
Merthe Weusthuis
Co-owner & Head of Europe & Middle East
Merthe runs her own product company, where the software is designed, built and shipped with the same AI tools the program teaches.
As Head of Product at Whiteshield, an AI-economics advisory, she led the development of its AI-native tools and their deployment inside national ministries. Before becoming Head of Product, she founded the firm’s academy and grew it into a training and certification business selling to governments and institutions, as well as served as policy advisor within education and labor policy. As a result, she has acquired an extensive skillset across AI, educational design, and the future of work.
Throughout her career, Merthe has worked with every level of the hierarchy: from students to deans, analysts to ministers, interns to CEOs. That range matters, because adoption is won in two places at once — in the room where a program is sponsored, and at the desk where the work actually has to change.
Education
MSc International Management, Rotterdam School of Management & CEMS
BSc International Business, University of Groningen
Leina Diaw
Co-owner & Head of Africa
Leina lectures in HR technology, HRIS and artificial intelligence at Master's and executive level at ISM Dakar. Her teaching is case-based: professionals bring a real organizational problem and leave with something they can act on.
She founded her own venture, building enterprise software and AI-enabled systems — ERP, CRM, inventory and reporting workflows — for mid-sized companies in West Africa. Before returning to Senegal she worked in HR technology at Workleap in Montreal, on M&A integration and the employee technology lifecycle, after a background in strategy consulting.
As lead organizer of Techstars Startup Weekend in Canada she ran innovation weekends for two to three hundred participants, taking teams from a problem statement to a tested prototype in three days. It is the format the AI Agent Competition is built on.
Education
MSc Corporate Strategy, HEC Montréal
BBA Finance & Management, HEC Montréal
Who we are
We are builders, teachers and consultants
We build
We use these tools on our own products, daily
We launch our own products and technology businesses, designed and built with the same AI tools the program teaches. So the curriculum is what we actually use rather than what we have read about — and it moves the moment the tools do.
We teach
We are educators and facilitators at heart
At universities and inside organizations, at Master’s and executive level. We know the difference between a session people enjoy and a session that leaves them able to do the thing on Monday morning, and we design for the second one.
We have advised
We have sat on the other side of the table
Years of consulting on the organizational and technology problems companies really have. It is why the program is built around sponsorship, ownership and measurement: training on its own has never changed a company, and we have watched that happen often enough to design against it.
Our method
Master the tools. Move the numbers.
Everything in the program is something we use ourselves, which is why it changes when the tools do.
Let's work together