After finishing his PhD studies in the field of fungal taxonomy and systematics in Leiden University in 1994, Gerard Verkley was appointed as postdoc in the Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute. He joined the institute’s CBS & NCCB Collection (>100 000 strains) in 2006, first as adjunct-curator and since 2010 as head curator. He is responsible for quality management (ISO 9001) and has been involved in several initiatives in the field of access and benefit sharing (ABS). He is member of the Microbial Biobank group for the EU ABS Consultation Forum, and lead the development of the MIRRI Best Practice on Access and Benefit Sharing (ABSbestpracticemanual.pdf (mirri.org)) and the new MTA and MDA model documents for the European Culture Collections’ Organisation (ECCO) (https://doi.org/10.1093/femsle/fnaa044), of which he is president since 2019.