HEINEKEN appoints new Chief Commercial Officer

Amsterdam, 6 July 2023 - Heineken N.V. (HEINEKEN) today announces that James Thompson, Chief Commercial Officer, will leave HEINEKEN on 31 December 2023. After turning 60 earlier this year, James has decided now is the time to retire from full-time executive work. His last day as Chief Commercial Officer will be 31 August 2023, and he will stay on through the transition period as an advisor to the Executive Board until the end of the year. Bram Westenbrink, will succeed James in the Executive Team as HEINEKEN’s new Chief Commercial Officer from 1 September 2023, reporting to Dolf van den Brink, HEINEKEN’s CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board.

James Thompson
James joined HEINEKEN in early 2021 at a crucial stage of our EverGreen transformation to help us shape our growth and innovation strategy. He brought considerable external experience and expertise from a nearly forty-year commercial career. 

Under his leadership, we launched our refreshed consumer demand spaces framework to become more consumer centric, which is now embedded across the business. He has reignited creativity in our brand building to accelerate brand power and kicked-off the first Innovation hubs in Singapore, the USA, Mexico, the Netherlands, and South Africa to build strong expansive innovation pipelines, which will be critical to drive the change in scale and shape of our innovation for delivering our EverGreen dream. He also kick-started a common approach to data-based marketing and sales, including a leading-edge ROI platform.

In this period Heineken was the most-awarded alcohol brand at Cannes Lions 2023, premium beer grew 15% and we launched eazle - our global eB2B platform growing from €2 billion to €10 billion gross merchandise value. James has given special focus to talent development and particularly building more diverse and inclusive Sales and Marketing teams.

Before joining HEINEKEN, James held several senior international leadership roles. At Avon, he was part of the leadership team charged with driving its purpose, commercial, marketing, digital and cultural transformation, including its new campaign “Watch Me Now” and leading global and local collaboration across over 50 markets. 

During his time at Diageo, he worked globally and on three continents, including in North America as Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer, in Asia Pacific as Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer, and as Managing Director, Global Reserve. Prior to Diageo, James spent 10 years at Unilever in various marketing positions.