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

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

Anthony Houghton

Group CEO

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.

Guy Farmer

Chief Commercial Officer

Guy Farmer is the Chief Commercial Officer at Holland & Barrett. With more than 30 years of experience in global consumer goods and retail, Guy leads the delivery of Holland & Barrett’s mission-led strategy across international markets. He is driving the transformation of the company’s product portfolio to meet customers’ most important health and wellness needs - combining trusted own-brand ranges with the best global wellness brands.

Before joining Holland & Barrett, Guy held senior leadership roles at Procter & Gamble, L’Oréal, Walgreens Boots Alliance, and The Very Group. Throughout his career, he has built deep expertise in building global brands, leading retail commercial organisations, driving customer-led business transformation and developing high performance teams.

At Holland & Barrett, Guy is focused on delivering sustainable growth through trusted, ethical, and innovative wellness products - helping make health and wellness accessible to all.

Ian Clark

Chief Strategy Officer

Vineta Rajaj

Chief Financial Officer

Maria Anderson

Chief People Officer

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.

Eugene Chistyakov

President of Digital Transformation

Eugene Chistyakov is Holland & Barrett’s President of Digital Transformation, joining in 2021 to lead the Technology division across Engineering, Product, Data, Cyber and Technology Operations.  Under his leadership, Holland & Barrett has built an enviable in-house technology capability, launching over 30 retail, supply chain and omnichannel systems to replace legacy tech estate with modern applications designed to power future business growth. 

A proven technology leader and entrepreneur, Eugene co-founded Lazada Group and served as its Group CTO during rapid scale-up. He was also previously President of Technology and Product of Ozon, a marketplace and logistics business well known as ‘The Amazon of Russia’.

Jacopo Mor

Chief Digital Officer

Alex Gourlay

Executive Chair

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.