Top 100 Supervisory Board Members 2026: Diversity Is in the Details

Else Bos is the second highest newcomer to this year's Top 100 Supervisory Board Members, coming in at no. 26. She owes this in part to her new position on the supervisory board of Achmea's. Jan van den Berg, Chairman of Achmea's supervisory board, said of her on her appointment: ‘Else Bos has extensive experience in the financial sector and possesses strong management and supervisory expertise. This makes her a valuable addition to Achmea's supervisory board’. In addition to her new role at Achmea, she is also a member of the supervisory board of Van Lanschot Kempen, Ortec Finance, and IFM Investors, and a board member of the Dutch National Opera & Ballet. She previously held senior positions at ABN AMRO, PGGM, and De Nederlandsche Bank.
In an interview earlier this year with Management Scope, Bos (born 1959) said that as a supervisory board member, she ‘only thrives when I feel welcome, when people are curious about my contribution, and when we share the same values’. She also said that she enjoys stepping outside her comfort zone sometimes. In the interview, she also discussed what she considers important in her work as a supervisory board member: ‘I served on the Corporate Governance Code Monitoring Committee that rewrote the 2022 code. In it, we introduced the concept of long-term value creation. I believe in this very strongly. It makes no sense for anyone to do things in the short term that destroy long-term value. So, I pay attention to that in my decisions’.
Bos, originally from Rotterdam and a graduate in econometrics, worked at DNB in ​​recent years, where she was a member of the executive board and chair of the supervisory board, responsible for, among other things, the supervision of pension funds and insurers and the digital strategy supervision. In 2024, after making a full recovery from cancer, she stepped down from her position. ‘A new period is dawning for me, in which I hope to share my knowledge and experience in supervisory roles’, she said at the time. Upon her departure, then-DNB President Klaas Knot called Bos ‘a driven colleague who has made an important contribution to the Nederlandsche Bank with conviction and vision’. Bos began her career at ABN AMRO and joined PGGM in 2002, where she served as CEO for five years. Under her leadership, PGGM's assets nearly doubled to more than €200 billion.
Bos once described herself in Elsevier as having a ‘science mind’. In an interview with the website of the employers' organization VNO-NCW, Bos herself said: ‘If you ask people who I am, they say I am a workaholic, a control freak’. According to De Telegraaf, Bos remains ‘an econometrician through and through’" The newspaper characterizes her as a woman who never raises her voice and as someone who makes rational, clear choices from which she later rarely deviates. In the Het Dagblad van het Noorden, she was described as ‘calm, empathetic, and tenacious.’
Publisher Jessica de Jong wrote about Bos in her book ‘Machtige Topvrouwen’ (Powerful Top Women, 2016). ‘Else Bos's life story has not been smooth sailing. She had to overcome many obstacles during her career. She recounts how she was passed over seven times for an important promotion at ABN AMRO. At PGGM, she was closer to tears than to laughter when she did receive a higher position. After her appointment was announced to a room of two hundred employees, no one came to congratulate her. But she overcame this setback. When she was crowned the top boss of PGGM a few years later, there was loud applause.’

Brian Hirman (new to the list at no. 64) is the first black supervisory board member on Rabobank’s supervisory board. In 2021, he joined the supervisory board of Rabobank's Amsterdam branch. Amsterdam is his hometown, although he grew up in Purmerend. With his appointment, Rabo primarily aimed to increase the knowledge of marketing communication and digital within the supervisory board. ‘AI and other digital innovations and developments have a huge impact on business models, propositions, and organizations. It is therefore crucial to have someone on the supervisory board who has at least some knowledge of these and can critically question the management.’ The appointment came as a surprise to Hirman, as he acknowledged in an interview with Marketing Report: ‘To be honest, I had never thought about it before, but apparently I had made a positive impression as a local supervisory board member. After an intensive process of almost a year and undergoing a fairly rigorous fit and proper assessment by De Nederlandsche Bank and the European Central Bank, I am proud to now be a member of the supervisory board of Rabobank Group.’
Hirman (born 1969), of Surinamese descent, is, as mentioned, Rabo's first multicultural supervisory board member, something he is proud of: ‘What I also find important is that I am the first supervisory board member of color with a bicultural background. Even in 2025, this is still not a given when you look at the composition of the supervisory boards of Dutch companies.’ Hirman is one of the pioneers for diversity in Dutch governing bodies. In 2007, Hirman was named ‘Multicultural Entrepreneur of the Year in the Netherlands’ (‘I embody Dutch pragmatism, the passion of the Creoles, and the helpfulness of the Javanese,’ he said in his acceptance speech). A few years ago, he posted a widely read message about racism on LinkedIn. It proved to be an eye-opener for many people, as he explained in an interview with 7DTV: ‘Many people assume that I am not affected by racism because I am better off than average. (...) We have been conditioned, and jokes about skin color were commonplace. I used not to have the courage to say anything about it. Now I dare to speak out. These days, we are moving from unconscious incompetent to conscious incompetent.'
Hirman is group M&A director and partner at digital agency iO. He started his career in the 1990s at Valkieser, one of the first digital agencies in the Netherlands. In 2014, he co-founded GUC Agency, which joined iO in 2019: a blended agency with approximately 2,000 employees in the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, and Bulgaria. Hirman enjoys sharing his knowledge, both within supervisory boards and through the iO Table Talks, in which he discusses the profession with chief marketing officers. He also hosts the podcast ‘Blending with Brian’.
The blending may also reveal something about Hirman's other passion: gin. Together with his old school friend Fred de Bies, he is the driving force behind the Dutch gin brand Spoonbill Gin, ‘a very smooth and accessible gin with notes of juniper berries, mace, cardamom, mint, rosemary, and lavender’. Hirman says his top-level sports mentality has also served him well. He played basketball at a high level and was the national coach of the Dutch national team for girls under fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen. In another life, he was also the singer of the band Silque.

Alexander de Carvalho is by far the youngest board member in the Top 100 Commissioners 2026. Born in 1984, De Carvalho is ranked 83^rd. He bears one of the most recognizable surnames in corporate Netherlands and is a descendant of the Heineken beer family. De Carvalho is the son of Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken (long considered ‘the richest person in the Netherlands’) and the grandson, reportedly even ‘the favorite grandson’ or ‘the apple of his eye’, of Alfred ‘Freddy’ Heineken.
This year, De Carvalho became a member of Heineken’s supervisory board. Alexander is thus the first ‘Heineken’ directly involved in the management of the brewery since his great-grandfather Freddy died in 2002. He is also the fifth generation of Heinekens to be ‘in power’ at the brewery.
Alexander de Carvalho did not rush into joining Heineken. His appointment to the supervisory board was carefully prepared. He had been a non-executive director of Heineken Holding, the vehicle through which the family holds its majority stake in the company, since 2013. Upon his appointment, he said that he primarily wanted to ‘listen, learn, and develop.’ Like his mother, De Carvalho prefers to remain in the background. He rarely gives interviews. As part of his appointment at the holding company, he spoke briefly – in English – to the Dutch press. He said at the time: ‘I grew up with Heineken. That started, of course, with my grandfather. Through him, the company was always very close to me. When I walk into a supermarket, I look whether the Heineken bottles are stored properly  in the refrigerator.' Another striking moment from the press conference: De Carvalho drinking ‘a Heineken’ and then noticing that the branding on the glass is invisible to the photographers. 'Can we do this again? My grandfather would have killed me if he saw this.'
At the time, the business magazine Quote asked him if he would ever take a seat on Heineken’s ‘real’ supervisory board. His answer then: 'Our family has historically been both very actively involved and been in a more supportive role, and the latter is working well at the moment. But suppose the situation is different in twenty years, well, then maybe.' He seemed to have little interest in the large Heineken stamp on his forehead: 'I think it is incredibly important to be assessed independently.' De Carvalho grew up in a family of five children in Kensington, an upscale London neighborhood. He was educated at the elite Eton boarding school and studied history at Harvard University in the US. He worked for the Austrian bank Gutmann and the investment company Lion Capital (at the time owner of Hema), among others. He also started his own company specializing in digital transformations, Public. De Carvalho is married to Countess Stephanie von und zu Eltz.
Earlier this year, De Volkskrant described him as ‘discreet and inconspicuous,’ while the Nederlands Dagblad described him as ‘a quiet man with a soft voice.’ In his student days, however, he was, according to Quote magazine, ‘extremely flamboyant.’ And the Heineken legacy? That is certainly still present. De Carvalho told Quote that he still wears his grandfather's Rolex every day. ‘And I also regularly wear his tie at work. But it is blue, and at Heineken meetings you are supposed to wear something green.’

Gerard van Olphen is a financial heavyweight who joined the supervisory board of online service provider Mollie last year. He immediately became its chairman. With almost twenty-five years of experience, Van Olphen is a well-known name in the financial sector. Besides being a supervisory board member at Mollie, he is also chairman of the supervisory board of ASN Bank and a member of the supervisory boards of a.s.r. and Robidus. In the past, he was chairman of the board of APG and chairman of the executive board of SNS Reaal, among other positions.
‘Someone with broad financial knowledge, who is amiable with his soft voice, but has been tough as nails as negotiator for years’, was how Van Olphen (born 1962) was described in 2012 when he returned to SNS Reaal. He is known for being clear and straightforward. A frequently cited anecdote is the time Van Olphen, as chairman of the board of APG, was critically questioned in a hostile Amsterdam audience about the pension provider's sustainability policy. Van Olphen responded boldly: ‘I will sell my entire stake in Shell today, if you and your parents would accept a lower pension’. Reportedly, few people had anything to say in response. During the coronavirus pandemic, Van Olphen decided to change course and step down as chairman of the board of APG. In De Telegraaf, he said: ‘It is not that I have a boat to sand. Nor do I intend to spend all day on the golf course. But working from home made me think about the balance between personal and professional life. I suddenly wondered whether I really wanted to run the marathon that is the introduction of a new pension contract over the next five or six years’" He opted for a life as a supervisor.
Gerard van Olphen was born in Amstelveen in 1962, the son of a trade union official. Another anecdote: his father once started a family tree research project because he hoped the ‘van’ in ‘Van Olphen’ meant that the family once owned an estate. Gradually, however, it became clear that the ‘van’ probably meant that members of the family belonged to a lord, like serfs. ‘That is when my father gave up on the research’" Van Olphen trained as a chartered accountant. He once said: ‘The perspective that accountants use to assess organizations provides extra insights. It is more of a sideways view than the top-down view that you often tend to have as board member’.