
Top 100 Corporate Women
Top 100 Corporate Women 2025
The top 100 has been refreshed by almost a fifth compared to last year (seventeen new entries), and the top ten has been shaken up considerably.

(4) Miriam van Dongen
Miriam van Dongen, as a ‘professional supervisory board member since 2009,’ has long been a familiar face in corporate Netherlands and in this list. Van Dongen owes her rise in the Top 100 Corporate Women to a further expansion of her already broad portfolio. Van Dongen became a supervisory director of Rabobank, where she is a member of the audit and risk committee, and a supervisory director of research firm TNO, where she chairs the audit committee. She is also still a supervisor at Achmea, Optiver and the Land Registry. She combines that with advisory roles in the financial sector: at the private equity firm BlackFin Capital Partners and at the uMunthu Investment Company, an investment fund focused on Sub-Saharan Africa.

(3) Pauline van der Meer Mohr
Runner-up Van der Meer Mohr more or less consolidated her heavy portfolio this year (including at the supervisory boards of NN Group, Ahold Delhaize and as chair of ASM International, among others). She left her position as a member of the capital market committee at the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets, but also took on a new position, as a member of the board of VEUO.

(2) Herna Verhagen
Herna Verhagen drops one position and trades places with Pauline van der Meer Mohr. Her departure from PostNL in particular costs Verhagen points in the ranking. Her supervisory positions at Philips and ING, and to a lesser extent Het Concertgebouw and the Goldschmeding Foundation, ensure that Verhagen –in 2023 leader of this list – is still one of the leading voices in corporate Netherlands.

(7) Carla Mahieu
Carla Mahieu is making a steady rise. The past HR positions of this DSM-Firmenich and Arcadis supervisory director have made her the specialist in talent management and succession planning in supervisory board country. In an earlier interview she said: Supervisory board members like to talk about strategy and financial figures, but now there is also much more attention to the importance of human capital. This stems from the realization that without the right people, even the best strategy cannot lead to success. The discussion about talent has broadened to now include the entire talent pipeline, not just the top positions.’

(31) Mieke De Schepper
An even more striking rise – from number thirty-one to number five – is for Mieke De Schepper. She has only recently returned to the Netherlands after almost two decades abroad, particularly Singapore. ‘I was completely out of the Dutch world, I hardly had a network here,’ she said earlier in an interview with this magazine. De Schepper is living proof that this can change quickly: she returned as CCO at Trustpilot and was appointed CEO of Sunweb last year, resulting in her being listed in all the leading lists. De Schepper is also the highest non-professional on the list.
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Justification
A female director is eligible if she holds one or more positions as a Supervisory Board member or Director with the most important businesses in the Netherlands. By this, we mean companies that are listed on the AEX, AMX (MidCap), or AScX (SmallCap) index and unlisted companies with equity in excess of 1 billion Euros. Foreign women are only eligible if they hold an executive position or at least two non-executive positions in these companies.
Allocation of points
All women are awarded points based on the amount of equity held by the companies where they hold a position. Executive positions for these businesses are worth more points than supervisory roles. In addition, the non-executive directors receive points for Chairmanships of Supervisory Boards or Executive Boards and Chairmanships of audit, remuneration and nomination committees.
In line with the corporate governance code for large companies, we assume a maximum of five points for supervisory positions: two for a chairmanship and one for a membership, together a full time commitment. A CEO gets six points.
Finally, points are awarded for supervisory roles for large overseas companies, universities, universities of applied science, hospitals, and other large businesses.
Cut-off date
The cut-off date for the rankings is 1 May 2025.