Gerrit is an Agricultural Engineer of Wageningen University, specializing in agrometeorology. He graduated in 1986. Starting in 1986 as a young meteorologist at Meteo Consult, a commercial weather company in Wageningen, he worked as an operational meteorologist and as a business developer for the agricultural market until 1995.In 1995 Gerrit switched to KNMI, the Dutch national weather service, to become head of the operational weather service at Schiphol airport. After a brief period, he got the opportunity to start a new commercial agricultural weather service at DLV Adviesgroep, the Dutch agricultural advisory service. From 1996 to 2000 he was managing director of DLV Meteo. During this period, he got in 1998 a position of part time weather presenter at NOS, the Dutch national news broadcasting organisation and holds this position until now.In the year 2000 Gerrit and two business partners acquired the activities of DLV Meteo through a management buyout and started WeerOnline, a weather company with clients in the Netherlands and abroad. In the following years the company developed into one of the main weather companies in The Netherlands with the popular weather website www.weeronline.nl. In 2009 the company was sold to Zoover.In 2014 Gerrit teamed up with business partner Arnold Lobbrecht to start Weather Impact, a company focusing on consultancy in the fields of meteorology and climate change.From June 2020 to May 2024, Gerrit has been a member of the Supervisory Board of Omrop Fryslân, the regional channel on TV, radio and internet in the province of Friesland. The official language at Omrop Fryslân is Frisian, the second official language in the Netherlands.