Holland & Barrett

Our People

We have an incredible team of over 7,800 colleagues across Europe in our 1,000+ stores and support functions. The majority of our colleagues work in the UK and Republic of Ireland, including our stores in both markets, our Nuneaton headquarters and our distribution, production and warehousing facilities. Almost 700 colleagues look after our owned stores and distribution in Belgium, Holland and Sweden.

Our extensive specialist training programme

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We are very proud of our extensive specialist training programme which is unparalleled in the health supplement industry. Under our own unique ‘Natural Health Academy’, our colleagues are able to gain qualifications in the provision of health advice which are to ‘A’ level equivalent standard and officially recognised by the UK Government’s ‘Education Development International’ programme. This is the first recognised training scheme to cover health on the high street, and associates are fully trained in understanding product safety and contraindications for products, for example use during pregnancy. Our commitment means customers can confidently have access to clear and concise information to help them make informed product choices to match their needs.

We have recently introduced our healthy experts training allowing our associates to further specialise in key areas such as sports nutrition, natural beauty, supplements or food.

Meet our Executive team

Alex Gourlay

Executive Chair of H&B

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Alex joined as Executive Chair of H&B in January 2023. A qualified pharmacist, until May 2021, Alex was the Co-Chief Operating Officer for Walgreens Boots Alliance, a global integrated Healthcare, Pharmacy and Retail leader with approximately 13,000 stores and 300,000 colleagues across USA, Europe and Latin America.

Anthony Houghton

Group CEO

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Anthony Houghton is the Group CEO of Holland & Barrett and is also a member of its board of directors.   

Since joining the business in 2018, he has held senior positions including Group Retail and Property Director, Chief Operating Officer, and CEO UK & Ireland when he steered the health and wellness retailer through a major phase of transformation. His appointment as Group CEO in October 2025 reflects the company’s focus on stability and long-term growth.  

With over 30 years of retail leadership across household names, Anthony brings a strong record of delivering performance, driving large-scale change, and building high-performing teams. He is recognised for his consistent leadership, deep understanding of the business, and commitment to Holland & Barrett’s purpose of supporting customer health and wellness.  

In 2025 Anthony was recognised in the Retail 100, Retail Week's annual ranking of the most influential individuals in the sector. He also sits on the board of the Retail Trust, the charity which promotes the happiness and interests of those engaged in the retail trade. 

Alex Dower

CEO International

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Alex has spent over 30 years in senior roles in Retail, Consumer Goods and Hospitality industries across UK, US, Europe and Asia in companies such as Tesco, Mars, Pret A Manger, Harrods, PepsiCo and Woolworths Australia. At Holland & Barrett, Alex is responsible for the International Division, which brings together the critical functions of the business that will drive international growth and development. This includes the Benelux, Franchise and International markets and the Group functions of Customer, Product Development, Sourcing, Technical, Production and Strategic Growth.

Tamara Rajah

CEO H&B Wellness Solutions & Chief Transformation Officer

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Tamara is CEO of H&B Wellness Solutions, which includes the development of H&B&Me, a personal digital wellness companion that will help people build the most important healthy habits to optimise their day-to-day wellness and prevent longer-term ill health. She is also the Chief Transformation Officer, leading the transformation of the H&B Group towards an ambitious vision of adding quality years to life for millions of people globally, and runs the Science, Strategy, Transformation, ESG and Corporate Affairs teams.

Tamara previously ran Live Better With, a consumer healthcare platform that improved the quality of life for millions of people living with chronic health conditions. Prior to that she was a Partner at McKinsey, where she spent over a decade in the healthcare practice in the UK and US.

Tamara currently holds Non Executive Director roles at the world’s largest building society, Nationwide, and at the Mayor of London’s international trade company, London & Partners.

Tamara is widely recognised, having received multiple highly regarded accolades, not least a MBE for services to Technology and Entrepreneurship in the 2020 Queen's Birthday Honours. She was also recognised by Management Today’s ’35 under 35’, The Wharton School’s ’40 under 40’, The Sunday Times Maserati 100, BusinessInsider UK’s Tech 100 and Computer Weekly’s Top 50 Influential Women in Tech.

Maria Anderson

Chief People Officer

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Maria Anderson is our Chief People Officer. She has over 30 years of experience in HR, OD, Change & Transformation gained in permanent and consulting roles with some of the world’s most successful companies.  Maria joined Holland and Barrett in 2020, initially to focus on OD, People Change and Transformation and to prepare the organisation for business growth. She was appointed as Chief People Officer in April 2022, bringing a particular commercial focus alongside her care and compassion for our thousands of Holland and Barrett colleagues, and a desire to make Holland and Barrett an even better place to work. Since her appointment Maria has led the business to significantly improve colleague engagement to above industry benchmark, to reduce labour turnover and improve the Holland & Barrett colleague proposition. 

Prior to joining Maria worked across most industries and sectors including Consumer, Retail, Travel and Hospitality and Professional Services having been responsible for large business and people transformation projects, organisation design, M&A, international growth and restructuring. She has held senior HR Leadership roles at companies including Accenture and her previous clients include FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 companies such as BUPA, Kimberly Clark, Home Retail Group (Argos, Habitat and Homebase), TUI and Whitbread. 

Nick Allen

Chief Financial Officer

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Nick is an experienced commercial Chief Financial Officer of international service-based retail businesses with extensive experience of developing business strategy, financial leadership and risk management.

Eugene Chistyakov

President of Digital Transformation

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We welcomed Eugene to the team in 2021. He brings a wealth of experience and has co-founded two tech companies - beyond 100 and Lazada Group.

Work at Holland & Barrett