CEO stories

Join us for another exciting episode in the CEO stories series, as SparkOptimus’ Co-Founder and Managing Partner Alexandra Jankovich sits down with Prabha Parameswaran, Group President of Growth and Strategy at Colgate-Palmolive, a values-driven Fortune 500 business executive with 25+ years track record of leading and growing businesses across emerging and developed markets.

Join us for an exciting episode of our CEO stories series, as Alexandra Jankovich sits down with two leaders from PostNL: Herna Verhagen, one of the few women CEOs on the Dutch Stock Exchange, and Jennifer Crites, the first woman CIO on the Stock Exchange. In this exclusive interview with both of the notable leaders, they delve into PostNL’s remarkable digital transformation journey, their ambitious sustainability goals, and the invaluable lessons they’ve gained along the way.

Since taking the helm as CEO at Henkel in 2020, Carsten Knobel has been a driving force behind the company’s Purposeful Growth agenda. In this Interview with managing partner and co-founder of SparkOptimus, Alexandra Jankovich, he discusses the progress made over the last two years, the five key elements behind the agenda and what the future holds.

Nancy McKinstry, CEO of Wolters Kluwer shares her key insights from 18 years at the top. How did she lead the company from the print age into the digital era while growing the share of digital revenue from ~30% to ~90%? Watch the full interview for the key insights of this digital transformation journey, the role of diversity, portfolio, revenue reinvestment, talent and much more.

CEO of Nestlé, Mark Schneider believes the best of digital is yet to come. As he leads the transformation, he shares key digital insights with Alexandra Jankovich: how consumers now move seamlessly between opportunities, why businesses need to reconfigure fast, and how mindsets are shifting from forward-looking market research to real-time data experimentation.

How did Just Eat Takeaway.com become Europe’s #1 food delivery marketplace? Founder and CEO Jitse Groen speaks about his approach to conquering new markets, how he adapts his leadership style over time, and he reveals the two key performance indicators he looks at every day.

Heineken’s former CEO, Jean-François van Boxmeer and Alexandra Jankovich, Co-founder & Managing Partner of SparkOptimus are looking back on the past 5 years of global partnership. Together they discuss digital initiatives, transformation strategies and innovative start-ups and what it takes to lead in digital as one of the world’s largest brewers.

Hanneke Faber, President Global Foods & Refreshment at Unilever, and listed by Fortune as one of the world’s most powerful women, discusses her leadership style with Alexandra Jankovich, as well as how she’s getting out on the edge with sustainability, technology and cultural change to win markets and do good.

Eddie Perdok, CEO of Kramp, took sales from 0 to 95% online, tripling turnover in ten years to become Europe’s largest supplier of agricultural parts. He talks to Alexandra Jankovich about how he’s now building for the future, heading off disruption from Amazon, and why to be a leader in digital, you need to think people first, digital second.

In 2010, bol.com faced a pivotal question: grow new product categories or expand into streaming? Daniel Ropers, former CEO of bol.com, talks about working with SparkOptimus on the strategy.

Pieter van der Does, co-founder and CEO of Adyen, offered clients a ‘subscription to innovation’, where traditional banks had neglected the payments sector as ‘dull’. He is now aiming for 1 trillion transactions.

Joris Beckers, co-founder of Picnic Technologies, speaks about how data is used to improve the online supermarket’s customer proposition, reduce waste, and make employees’ lives easier.

Benoît Coquart (CEO, Legrand): “You need to be humble enough to understand: if [your product] doesn’t fulfill the need of the customer, it will be good for the books, but not for the business.” Benoît Coquart explains how to stay relevant and serve the customer while being “technology-agnostic”.

André Hoffmann (Vice-Chairman of the Board, Roche Holding Ltd): “We have decided some years ago that the only way to measure business is for financial flows, but we do not account at any stage of the impact our businesses have on social systems, on human systems, and our natural system. As a shareholder, I would like to know the impact that the companies I’m invested in are having on the planet.”

Petri Hofsté (Supervisory board member Rabobank, Achmea, Fugro, and Pon Holdings) talks about responsible leadership and advocates for a new way to approach education in the future, closing the gap between need and supply of knowledge and skills. “The responsibility aspects of leadership should be more prominent and in the crisis period they are now becoming more prominent, as of course the prime focus is on the well-being of people, their health and safety. Without that there is no continuity of the business."