Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Seasoned Retail executive with 20+ years of experience driving operational turnarounds and unlocking value across North America, Europe, and Africa and the Middle East. Proven success in leadership roles at Walmart, Nike, Ahold Delhaize, and Deloitte—consistently delivering topline, market share, and profitability growth alongside digital transformation. Played a key role in company turnarounds (Walmart Africa), leading large-scale operations (Walmart Canada), post-merger integrations (Ahold-Delhaize) and 30+ transformation engagements as consultant (Deloitte); Combines a drive for strategic clarity with hands-on execution at pace, aligning talent, operating model and stakeholders to maximize value creation and future-proof businesses. Married to Anke, proud father of two (Lucas and Anna). Passionate about travel, outdoor exploration, golf, and all things sport.
• Expat assignment to help stabilize and grow Walmart Africa's business • Leading operations across 4 retail banners in 5 countries ($8B turnover, 309 stores, 30,000+ associates). • Stepped up to lead the executive team through a 10-month CEO leadership transition. * Opened the first ever Walmart stores in Africa including a 60 min delivery proposition • Defined strategic options and secured alignment with Walmart International, repositioning the business for growth • Restored operating and commercial discipline, driving market share gains, improved NPS, structural improvement of profitability, and the first associate bonus payout in 6 years. • Rebuilt the leadership team, developed local talent, and embedded a high-performance, accountable culture. • Accelerated Digital and Omni-channel initiatives to future-proofing the business.
•Member of the Walmart Canada Executive Committee. Led operations of 408 stores with $28B USD in annual revenue, and 60.000 proud associates. Delivered consistent sales growth through improving customer satisfaction by 12% and associate engagement by 8%. • Integrated e-commerce and physical store operations to solidify the omni-channel business. • Guest speaker at the McGill University – Retail School of Management • Selected for BLX leadership program, a 2-year development program with 25 global leaders hand-picked and sponsored by the Walmart Global Executive Committee engagement.
• Achieved double-digit sales growth, expanding market share and positioning Walmart as an omnichannel leader in the Central Canada region ($9B, 102 stores) • Led COVID-response initiatives, ensuring operational continuity, working with governments and accelerating our omnichannel capabilities, including a fulfillment expansion by 20-30%.
• Key leadership role driving the integration efforts during the $30B merger of Ahold and Delhaize, both in Europe and US, delivering 90% of synergy targets in 18 months. • Led "Better Together" NewCo strategy development, important change efforts, leveraging both companies’ commercial best practices, org reset and significant cost and sourcing efficiencies
Set up and led a LEAN Program, supporting process improvement across the different retail functions of Delhaize Belgium.
Led over 30 transformation and operational excellence projects across multiple industries in Europe. Delivering top-line, cost improvements and future-proofing the businesses we worked with.
Led the Apparel distribution planning team. Improved on-time and in-full delivery across EMEA by 10-15% through a Six Sigma supply chain optimization.