Dave Lewis

When working at Unilever, he was nicknamed “Drastic Dave” which was a reflection of his management actions which included reducing the number of products produced by the company from 1600 to 400 and for cutting jobs which led to a decrease of 40% in company expenditure for the year 2007.

Sir David John Lewis (born 1965) is an English businessman.

Lewis was born in March 1965, in Yorkshire.

Lewis attended Hills Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge from 1979 to 1981.

After Thorne Grammar School, he went to university, graduating from Trent Polytechnic, now Nottingham Trent University, with a BA in Business Studies in 1987.

In 1987, after graduating from Nottingham Trent University, Lewis obtained a post as graduate trainee at the Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilever, in the UK.

He worked at Unilever for 27 years from 1987 until September 2014.

Between 1990 and 1992, he worked at National Accounts for the company.

One of the biggest successes of his career at Unilever was in 1992 when he launched Dove, a personal care brand, in the UK.

A year later, in 1993, he became company operations manager for Lever Brothers Ltd, a subsidiary of Unilever in the UK.

During his time at Unilever, Lewis worked in various positions across the company around the world.

In 1996, after 12 years at the company, Lewis moved to South America to become Marketing Director of River Plate which involved Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Three years later, in 1999, he moved to Indonesia where he worked as Managing Director of Unilever for the personal care business of the country.

According to Unilever, Lewis managed an average annual growth rate of 30% for the business of personal care of Indonesia.

He served at this post until September 2001.

In 2002, he completed a six-week Advanced Management Programme at Harvard Business School.

In 2002, he attended Harvard Business School, where he completed the Advanced Management Programme before becoming Senior Vice President for Home and Personal Care of Central and Eastern Europe in 2002.

He served at this post for three years.

In 2004, Lewis and his team came up with an unconventional approach called the “Real Beauty” campaign as a marketing strategy for Unilever's Dove brand.

This involved using everyday women rather than models in the brand’s advertisements.

The campaign received a positive response.

In 2005, he returned to the UK and worked as Managing Director of the UK's home and personal care business.

In 2007, he was appointed chairman of Unilever for UK and Ireland.

In 2010, Lewis became president for the Americas.

In 2011, he became President of Personal Care of the company.

This was the result of Tesco’s previous CEO, Philip Clarke, stepping down from his post which he obtained in 2011.

In 2012, Nottingham Trent University awarded Lewis an honorary doctorate.

Lewis worked at Unilever for over 27 years in various posts.

He is the former CEO of Tesco, serving from 2014 to 2020.

Prior to joining Tesco, he was president of global personal care at Unilever.

In August 2014, he left the company to become CEO of the British multinational retailer Tesco.

The launch of Dove in the UK was seen as a success considering the fact that Dove is now one of Unilever's largest brands contributing $5,885 million to the company for the year 2014.

He occupied this post until October 2014, when he became CEO of Tesco.

Before the announcement in July 2014 that he would be leaving the company, he was a candidate to become Paul Polman's successor as CEO of Unilever.

In July 2014, it was announced that Lewis was leaving Unilever to become CEO of Tesco.

Lewis was scheduled to start work as CEO of Tesco on 1 October 2014, but he began work a month earlier than planned, on 1 September 2014.

Lewis became CEO after the debacle when it was revealed to the public that Tesco overestimated their profits by £250 million for the year 2014.

Tesco had chosen Lewis to replace Clarke due to the many years of experience Lewis has gained throughout his career at Unilever working at various posts for both the national (UK) market as well as the international market.

Lewis left Tesco in September 2020.

In September 2021, Lewis joined energy startup Xlinks as executive chair.