European affairs and gay rights. She was the vice-chairwoman of the parliamentary party and the chairwoman of the parliamentary committee on technology policy and vice-chairwoman of the committee on European affairs. In 2004, she and her husband, Dennis Hesseling, a mathematician, had a son that they named "Helix". Van der Laan, who speaks English and Dutch fluently, is raising her son bilingually. She assumed the parliamentary leadership of D66 in the House of Representatives on 3 February 2006, succeeding Boris Dittrich. Dittrich stepped down after the debate on sending Dutch troops to the Afghan province of Uruzgan. Lousewies van der Laan lost out to Alexander Pechtold in the June 2006 D66 leadership election. Van der Laan played a significant role in the downfall of the Second Balkenende cabinet by supporting a motion of no confidence against Minister Rita Verdonk regarding Verdonk's behavior in the matter of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's citizenship. On 4 August 2006, she announced that she would retire from the House of Representatives after the 2006 elections. She describes herself as an agnostic. Life after politics After leaving elected office, Lousewies van der Laan ran an international consultancy business, LW International, which included clients like the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster reduction. From January 2009 until 2015 she was employed as the Chef de Cabinet working for the Presidency of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Lousewies van der Laan remains active in promoting democracy, inter alia, by working with the National Democratic Institute, including as election observer at the 2007 elections in Morocco and 2009 elections in Lebanon. Since 2008 she has chaired the Dutch National Committee of United World Colleges, which selects students to attend one of the 12 United World Colleges around the world. She is a member of Women on Top, which advocates for more women in high level positions and works against the feminisation of poverty. She sits on various Advisory boards, including the Getu Foundation, the Rainbow Tree Foundation (Stichting De Regenboogboom) and the International Democratic Initiative. She has been a member of the Steering Board of the "Apeldoorn Conference", the bilateral conference between the UK and The Netherlands since 2004. She is a guest lecturer at the University of Maastricht, the Clingendael Institute for International Relations and the Nyenrode Business University. In 2015 she was appointed to the Board of Directors of ICANN, for a three-year term starting in