Michiel Leenaars (1972, Netherlands) is Director of Strategy at NLnet. He is responsible for defining and initating short term and long term policies and managing strategic activities within the NLnet foundation, and acts as its spokesperson to the press and society. He joined the management team of NLnet in 2007. He has a background in Physics at Technische Universiteit Eindhoven and Theory and history of literature/Visual and verbal communication at Tilburg University. He currently leads two of the four Research & Innovation Actions of the Next Generation Internet initiative, NGI Zero Discovery and NGI Zero PET.

Michiel Leenaars combines his job at NLnet with a job as director of Internet Society Netherlands, one of the more sizable Internet Society chapters in the world. He is also a W3C liason officer for the Benelux Office of the World Wide Web Consortium.

He is also a member of the UNESCO PERSIST Technical Taskforce. PERSIST (Platform to Enhance the Sustainability of the Information Society Transglobally) is a cooperation between UNESCO, the International Council on Archives (ICA), the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), LIBER, and several other organisations to collect and share worldwide best practices and guidelines on selecting policies and digital strategies.

He is active in a number of national and international organisations, such as OpenDoc Society (vice-chair), SIDN Fund (Board of Advisors), Digitale Infrastructuur Nederland, and Petities.nl foundation (treasurer).

From 2014-2018 he was member of the Netherlands national Education Council. The "Onderwijsraad" is the highest Netherlands governmental advisory body to advise the Minister, Parliament and local authorities on education policy.