Unilever's chief marketer Conny Braams stepping down
Company says replacement will be named “in due course” as CFO also departs and new CEO arrives.
ShanonG
Unilever’s chief marketer Conny Braams will step down in August and chief financial officer Graeme Pitkethly will exit the company by the end of May 2024, the consumer packaged goods giant announced today amid a changing of the CEO guard.
Both executives leave as incoming CEO Hein Schumacher prepares to take over from Alan Jope on July 1.
A statement from Unilever said Braams’ successor will be “announced in due course,” but did not note an outside search, which Jope conducted for a year before appointing the longtime Unilever executive in 2019. The company’s statement said its board will conduct a formal internal and external search to replace Pitkethly, who Unilver said is retiring from the company after more than two decades.
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Braams, whose title is chief digital and commercial officer, is set to present at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity alongside Alessandro Manfredi, executive global VP of Dove, next month. She works alongside other executives who have long been in Unilever’s central marketing leadership, including Aline Santos Farhat, who holds the dual roles of chief brand officer and chief equity diversity & inclusion officer, and Luis DiComo, executive VP of global media.
Braams was originally appointed chief digital and marketing officer starting in 2020, having previously held several senior management roles at Unilever in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Her duties were expanded to cover sales last year. Braams has spent 33 years with the company.
“I am very grateful for Conny’s excellent leadership of our digital, marketing and commercial agenda over the last four years, and for her impressive contribution to Unilever over three decades,” Jope said in a statement. “As CDCO she has helped to transform our company into a future-fit, fully digitized organization.”
Schumacher, who’s been on Unilever’s board since June 2022, when he was named Jope’s successor, was CEO of Royal FrieslandCampina from 2018 until this month. Before that, he worked for H.J. Heinz for more than a decade, including leading its China and Asia Pacific businesses.
