Paul Polman was appointed an Executive Director of Unilever in October 2008. He assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer on 1st January 2009.
Paul began his career at Procter & Gamble in 1979 and was group president Europe and officer of the Procter & Gamble Company until 2001.
Prior to joining Unilever, Paul was chief financial officer of Nestlé S.A. from January 2006 as well as executive vice president for the Americas from February 2008.
Paul serves as President of the Kilimanjaro Blind Trust and Chairman of Perkins International Advisory Board. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the European Round Table, the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum and the Swiss American Chamber of Commerce. He is on the Board of the Consumer Goods Forum where he co-chairs the Board Strategy and the Sustainability Committees. He is a Trustee of both the Leverhulme Trust and Asia House, a former board member of Alcon and, since February 2010, a non-executive director of the Dow Chemical Company.
Married with three children, Paul enjoys reading, marathon running, and mountaineering, but his main passion is for his role in running the Kilimanjaro Blind Trust.
Paul earned a BBA/BA from the University of Groningen, Netherlands, in 1977 and an MA in economics and MBA in finance/international marketing from the University of Cincinnati in 1979. He has honorary degrees from the Universities of Northumbria, Newcastle, UK (2000) and the University of Cincinnati, US (2009).
It was a speech I gave in Cincinnati at graduation. What I said to these students was work is a purpose in life. You're very fortunate as a student and people like us, we belong to the less than 1% probably, that can decide where to work and what to do and it's important that we do that with that s...(Full transcript available to logged in subscribers.).
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