Hanneke Faber

Overview

Hanneke Faber
Born	1969 (age 56–57) Amsterdam area, Netherlands
Citizenship	Netherlands
Education	Bachelor's degree in journalism; Master of Business Administration
Alma mater	University of Houston
Occupation	Business executive
Employer	Logitech International S.A.
Known for	Chief executive officer of Logitech; former president of Unilever's global Foods & Refreshment (Nutrition) division
Title	Chief Executive Officer
Term	2023–present
Predecessor	Bracken Darrell
Board member of	Tapestry, Inc.; Bayer AG (former supervisory board member)
Spouse	Aristotle "Ari" Economon
Children	3
Awards	Listed among Fortune's most influential international women in business

👤 Hanneke Faber (born 1969) is a Dutch business executive who has served as chief executive officer (CEO) of Logitech International, a Swiss–American manufacturer of computer peripherals, since 1 December 2023. Before joining Logitech she spent three decades in the consumer goods and retail sectors, holding senior roles at Procter & Gamble (P&G), Dutch–Belgian grocer Ahold Delhaize and Unilever, where she led the group’s global Foods & Refreshment business (later reorganised as the Nutrition division). A former seven-time Dutch national champion in springboard diving, she studied journalism and business at the University of Houston and has been cited by business media for combining consumer marketing expertise, digital transformation work and an emphasis on sustainability.

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Early life and education

🧒 Early years and diving. Johanna "Hanneke" Faber was born in 1969 in the Amsterdam area of the Netherlands and grew up in a Dutch household where competitive sport quickly became central to her life. As a teenager she specialised in springboard diving, becoming a seven-time national champion and representing the Netherlands as a finalist at European and world competitions, experiences she later credited with teaching her resilience and the ability to recover quickly from mistakes.

🎓 Studies in the United States. In 1987 Faber accepted a full athletic scholarship to the University of Houston in Texas, choosing the city largely for its warm climate despite knowing little else about it at the time. At Houston she completed a bachelor's degree in journalism through the university’s honours programme and subsequently an MBA, graduating summa cum laude in 1992; she has said that the intensive writing and critical-thinking training she received has been helpful in every job she has held. Her college years also reinforced lessons from sport: a difficult dive early in her career, which she has often recounted, encouraged her to focus on elements within her control rather than dwelling on failure. During her time at the university she met fellow student Aristotle "Ari" Economon, an American scholarship recipient who would later become her husband.

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Career

💼 Procter & Gamble. After finishing her MBA, Faber joined Procter & Gamble in 1992, beginning a two-decade career at the consumer goods company in marketing and brand management. She rose through the beauty and personal care business to lead several of P&G’s global hair-care brands, including Pantene, Head & Shoulders and Herbal Essences, ultimately serving as vice-president and general manager for the portfolio. In these roles she worked across multiple regions and was involved in initiatives such as the launch of the Max Factor cosmetics brand in China, building experience in positioning Western brands in Asian markets.

🛒 Move to retail and Ahold Delhaize. In 2013 Faber left Procter & Gamble to join Dutch supermarket group Ahold as chief commercial officer, marking a shift from manufacturing to food retailing. At Ahold she took charge of the company’s emerging e-commerce and digital strategy, helping to build its online grocery business into one of the world’s larger e-commerce operations and promoting an omnichannel approach that linked stores with digital platforms and loyalty programmes. Following Ahold’s 2016 merger with Belgian retailer Delhaize, she became chief e-commerce and innovation officer of the combined Ahold Delhaize group, overseeing innovation across formats and markets as online grocery shopping expanded rapidly.

🧃 Unilever leadership. Faber joined Unilever in January 2018 as president of the group’s Europe region, becoming one of the few external executives on its top leadership team. She was promoted in 2019 to lead Unilever’s global Foods & Refreshment division, later reorganised as the Nutrition business group, overseeing a portfolio of food and beverage brands with annual sales of around US$14 billion. Under her leadership a business that had previously struggled to grow returned to high single-digit quarterly growth while maintaining strong profit margins, helped by a repositioning of brands around nutrition and sustainability. Faber led portfolio reshaping moves such as the disposal of most of Unilever’s tea business and acquisitions including malted drink brand Horlicks and Dutch plant-based protein company The Vegetarian Butcher, as well as stepped-up innovation in established brands such as Hellmann’s and Knorr. The division was ranked the top food company globally in the World Benchmarking Alliance’s food and agriculture benchmark during her tenure.

🏆 Recognition at Unilever. During her time at Unilever, Faber became one of the company’s most prominent executives and was sometimes mentioned by commentators as a potential future group chief executive. External organisations also recognised her influence: Fortune magazine included her among its ranking of the most influential international women in business, and business networks highlighted her role in advancing sustainability in the food sector. She combined her Unilever responsibilities with broader industry work, serving on advisory groups focused on food systems, nutrition and waste reduction.

🖱️ Appointment at Logitech. In October 2023 Logitech International announced that Faber would become its new chief executive officer following the resignation of long-time CEO Bracken Darrell; she formally assumed the role on 1 December 2023. The company’s board described her as an experienced global leader who had driven growth and transformation across multi-billion-dollar businesses, while noting her background in consumer goods, retail and food. Faber became one of the relatively few women leading a large technology hardware company and relocated to work between Logitech’s Swiss headquarters and its operations in Silicon Valley.

💻 Strategy and early results at Logitech. Faber took over Logitech after a period of strong pandemic-era demand followed by a downturn as remote-work purchases normalised, with the company reporting several quarters of declining sales before her arrival. She outlined three main demand “tailwinds” for the business—hybrid work, the expansion of gaming to new demographics and the emergence of artificial intelligence—and focused on maintaining product innovation in peripherals and collaboration tools aligned with those trends. Under her leadership Logitech reported its first year-on-year quarterly sales growth in more than two years in early 2024 and modestly raised its full-year outlook, even as she cautioned that any recovery in demand was likely to be gradual rather than a rapid rebound. She also began streamlining the product portfolio and emphasised sustainability as a central part of strategy, including plans to reduce the company’s carbon footprint and greater use of recycled materials in devices.

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Financials and wealth

💰 Chief executive compensation. As Logitech’s chief executive, Faber receives a remuneration package designed to be competitive with peers in the technology hardware sector, combining salary, annual bonus and equity-based incentives. According to her employment agreement, her base salary is approximately US$1.35 million (paid in Swiss francs), with a target annual bonus of 125% of base pay, giving target cash compensation of around US$3 million. She also received performance stock units covering a three-year period, together with one-time “make-whole” cash and restricted-stock grants intended to replace unvested incentives forfeited on leaving her previous employer. Taken together, filings indicate that her first-year total direct compensation, including salary, bonus opportunity and equity awards, was on the order of US$10 million.

🏦 Wealth and other roles. Beyond her Logitech compensation, Faber has accumulated wealth through earlier senior roles in large corporations and through service on corporate boards. She has served as a non-executive director of Tapestry, Inc., the parent company of Coach, Kate Spade and Stuart Weitzman, where she has chaired the audit committee, and previously sat on the supervisory board of Bayer AG from 2016 to 2021, roles that typically involve fees and equity grants. Combined with pension entitlements and investment holdings built up over more than three decades in business, these positions place her among the group of multi-millionaire corporate executives, though she does not have the outsized shareholdings associated with founder-CEOs in the technology sector.

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Leadership style and philosophy

🧭 Customer focus and hands-on approach. Commentators describe Faber’s leadership style as strongly customer-oriented and grounded in a willingness to engage directly with operations. During her time leading Unilever’s foods business she popularised the internal phrase “we are all chefs” to emphasise that everyone in the division should focus on delighting consumers, and she has spoken of regularly visiting factories, restaurant kitchens and retail outlets to understand how products are made and used. She has linked this curiosity both to her early training in journalism, which encouraged her to ask probing questions, and to her sports background, where incremental improvements are central to performance.

🤝 Team culture and shared experiences. Faber places particular emphasis on team culture, arguing that shared experiences are important in building trust and performance. In interviews she has used the metaphor of “filling the scrapbook” to describe her approach to leadership, encouraging managers to create memorable moments—from social events to off-site meetings—that strengthen bonds within teams. She also stresses the importance of celebrating small wins as a way to build momentum towards larger goals, a technique she associates with her experience of competitive sport.

🎯 Strategic focus and sustainability. Strategically, Faber has favoured concentrating resources on a smaller number of higher-impact initiatives rather than spreading efforts thinly across many projects. At Unilever’s Nutrition division she supported pruning the product portfolio and reducing the number of new initiatives while increasing their average scale, arguing that such focus was necessary to accelerate growth. She is also a prominent advocate of linking financial performance with environmental and social goals, promoting plant-based foods, improved nutrition profiles and efforts to cut food waste while at Unilever, and later championing low-carbon design and circularity in Logitech’s product development. In 2019 she attracted attention for describing hard-to-recycle multi-layer plastic sachets used across the consumer goods industry as “evil”, a remark that underscored her view that companies should move away from packaging that cannot be reused or recycled.

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Personal life and philanthropy

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Family and international background. Faber married Aristotle “Ari” Economon, whom she met while both were students at the University of Houston, and the couple have three children born in 1999, 2002 and 2004. Her career has led the family to live in several countries, including the Netherlands, Greece, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, giving their children what she has described as an international upbringing. She speaks multiple languages, including Dutch, English, French, German and Greek, and maintains close ties to Houston; two of her children have also attended the University of Houston, continuing what she has called a family tradition at the institution.

❤️ Philanthropy and advocacy. Drawing on her own educational opportunities, Faber and her husband have for more than a decade funded an endowed scholarship at the University of Houston that supports honours students travelling to Europe, often on their first visit outside the United States. She has been active in initiatives to advance women in leadership and diversity in executive ranks, including serving on the advisory board of Leading Executives Advancing Diversity (LEAD) in Europe and participating in networks connected to the World Economic Forum’s food-systems work. Within the companies she has led, she has spoken openly about balancing senior leadership responsibilities with family life and has sought to mentor younger managers, particularly women, who aspire to senior roles.

🎤 Personality and workplace culture. Colleagues have frequently described Faber as energetic and approachable, noting her willingness to mix formal business activities with informal social events. Reflecting her diving background, she continues to value sport and outdoor activities as a way to manage pressure, and she has been known to participate in karaoke sessions or themed celebrations at company gatherings to encourage team bonding. At Logitech she has supported company-wide social activities, such as seasonal celebrations, arguing that shared experiences help teams “win together”.

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Controversies and challenges

⚖️ Boardroom pressures at Logitech. Faber’s appointment at Logitech took place against a backdrop of shareholder concern about the company’s strategic direction following the post-pandemic slowdown in demand for computer peripherals. Shortly before and around her arrival, co-founder Daniel Borel publicly criticised the board’s succession planning and opposed the re-election of the chair, arguing that the company had “lost its way”. Faber responded by stressing the need to reduce costs, refocus on core categories and gradually restore growth, and early in her tenure she used earnings calls to lay out a cautious recovery plan rather than promising rapid change, a stance that initially disappointed some investors hoping for more dramatic restructuring.

🗳️ Debate over purpose and performance at Unilever. While at Unilever, Faber worked within a broader corporate agenda that sought to link brand purpose with social and environmental goals, an approach that drew both praise and criticism. Some investors and commentators argued that the company risked focusing too much on public virtue signalling, creating tension between advocates of a strong sustainability agenda and those prioritising short-term shareholder returns. As head of the foods business she navigated these debates while engaging with activist investors who pressed for faster growth and higher margins, arguing that improved nutrition and more sustainable products could support long-term performance. Her outspoken description of non-recyclable plastic sachets as “evil” was welcomed by environmental campaigners but also highlighted the difficulty of rapidly changing packaging systems in developing markets.

🌐 Supply chains and talent competition. In leading Logitech, Faber has also had to address structural challenges common to the electronics industry, notably supply-chain concentration and competition for skilled workers. Logitech has historically relied heavily on manufacturing in China, and under her leadership the company has continued efforts to diversify production to other countries in response to trade tensions and logistical risks. She has additionally warned that Europe risks falling behind the United States in attracting top engineering and artificial-intelligence talent, urging both companies and policymakers to foster conditions that make the region more attractive to innovators.

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Other interests and perspectives

📚 Personal interests and mentoring. Beyond formal roles, Faber’s career has included a range of personal details and informal practices that colleagues often cite as distinctive. Friends have noted that her family life reflects her international orientation, from giving one of her daughters the Greek name Athena in recognition of her husband’s heritage to embracing a broad mix of culinary traditions from Dutch to Texan and Greek cuisines. At work she has been known by nicknames such as “the coach”, a reflection both of her board role at the owner of the Coach brand and her habit of informally coaching and mentoring younger managers.

🏅 Sport-inspired programmes. Faber’s sporting background has influenced initiatives she has launched inside companies, including programmes focused on “peak performance” that borrow concepts from sports psychology to help employees manage pressure and build resilience. At Logitech she has incorporated elements such as celebrating milestones with symbolic awards and inviting sports coaches to speak at leadership events, with the aim of translating lessons from elite sport into corporate teamwork and leadership development.

💡 Views on technology and the future of work. Although her background is in consumer goods rather than engineering, Faber has articulated clear views on how technology should serve users. She has argued that the best technology products are those that “disappear into the background”, enabling people to focus on their tasks rather than on the devices themselves, and has encouraged Logitech’s engineers to prioritise solving practical user problems over adding features for their own sake. In discussions of artificial intelligence and cloud computing she has also highlighted the need to consider environmental impacts, calling for concrete reductions in emissions rather than relying solely on carbon-offset schemes.

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