Interview with Maarten Van Leeuwen, Cambodia Country Manager for Danone Specialized Nutrition
This week, we spoke with Cambodia and Myanmar Country Manager for Danone Specialized Nutrition Maarten Van Leeuwen and gained insights into his leadership journey and Cambodia's unique health and market landscapes. As a speaker at EuroCham's upcoming Green Business Forum on November 1, we also discussed the importance of responsible business practices and what puts Cambodia on a promising trajectory for sustainable development.
You’ve had a diverse career starting in sales and moving into R&D, brand management, and leadership roles across multiple regions. How have these experiences shaped your overall leadership philosophy, especially now in your role as Country Manager for Cambodia and Myanmar?
I was quite fortunate because I had different functions across different regions in my career and each of these functions brought me to where I am today and shaped my leadership skills and my leadership philosophy. I started in sales, which was a great way to start my career because it's direct consumer and customer contact – it’s about active listening, it's about understanding their needs, it's about how our products can help meet these needs, and about building the right relationships.
Then I moved to R&D, which was my transition to the fascinating world of science and health. My job was basically to bridge the gap between commercial teams, the sales and the marketing teams, and then the real scientific people, to create great products with great benefits.
Eventually I moved into marketing where it's about how you translate these products with great benefits into real brands that talk to the consumer: to the mind and to the heart of the consumer. Hence the importance of understanding consumers, listening, and translating insights into action.
I think if you sum up all these experiences, they've taught me what is important: working together with people has been the key success factor. The rest you can learn along the way. It's about embarking people on the vision. It's about embracing diversity and understanding that diverse perspectives can lead to better innovation, more creativity, and better teams.
Danone operates in countries around the world, serving unique markets and diverse consumers. How do you leverage this global perspective and tailor operations to Southeast Asia and Cambodia specifically?
I think the success of our company is really about local relevance. We are a global food company and we have big brands being commercialised all over the world, but the success of these products is about finding the local hook, the local product, the local relevancy within each of these markets.
We have approximately 69 people here [in the office] and there are about 183 people out in the field. All these people are working day in day out with our customers, with our consumers, and with our health care professionals. Besides this, we invest heavily in local research, spending hours talking with our consumers to understand their needs, to understand how they use our products. And it is exactly that local knowledge that helps us to translate global brands into locally loved brands. That is our reason to exist, that’s the reason for our success.
Since taking on the role of Country Manager for Danone in Cambodia and Myanmar, what have been your key priorities in these markets, and how do they align with Danone’s global mission of sustainable development?
Specifically for Cambodia, and Southeast Asia in general, I think we are in a unique and privileged position that we can actually contribute to our mission of bringing health through food to as many people as possible.
Within this region there's a high level of malnutrition. Here in Cambodia, one out of two kid suffers from iron deficiency anemia and there is high prevalence of stunting. So, this is a region and a country where we can bring our mission to life, where we can contribute to reducing malnutrition and iron deficiency anemia among population and the next generations of Cambodians.
For example, with iron deficiency anemia, we are working together with the government and health professionals to do massive screenings because for many kids, you don't immediately see that they are lacking iron.
We also do donations, we do voluntary works, and so on. That is as important as selling the products because we are not here for the quick win in Cambodia. We are not here just to serve financial targets. We want to do business in a sustainable way, delivering value for all stakeholders of our eco-system: employees, consumers, customers, partners and communities. At Danone, we believe that business without sustainability has no future but sustainability without business has no impact. And that’s exactly what we want to do in Cambodia: deliver sustainable business by balancing purpose and profit.
Compared to other regions in the world, how do you judge the Southeast Asian business landscape in terms of sustainable development? Within this context, are there any challenges or opportunities that you feel are specific to the region, or Cambodia, in particular?
I think the unique perspective for Southeast Asia, and specifically for Cambodia, is that these countries are in an exciting stage of development. You see bridges being built, airports being built, roads being built. So, it's also a unique opportunity to build your business and society right from the start in a sustainable way.
We’re at a bit of a crossroad as well there. How do you want to build your country? How do you want to build your economy, your business environment, your society, your community? I think it's admirable that Cambodia wants to do it in a sustainable way. I think the challenge is that it's not an easy topic though. It's a complex topic involving many, many stakeholders.
It's not a question of whether the government is taking the lead, or the private sector is taking the lead, or NGOs are taking the lead. No one can do it alone. It's really about working together, private and public sector, to learn from each other, to try awesome stuff, to try projects that can create impact.
You will be speaking at the Green Business Forum taking place on November 1. Could you give us a sneak peek at the key topics you will be addressing at the forum?
I'm very happy to be there and also to speak on behalf of Danone Cambodia. It's not just me, it's really about showcasing the efforts of the team that I'm representing. I will talk about Danone, how sustainability is part of our DNA, how we align business strategies with sustainability goals, what we have done so far and what we are still doing to reach our sustainability goals.
I'll be talking about certification and about how operating a business in a sustainable way can be certified and what it means to have that certification. I will go into a bit more detail on two points concerning B Corp certification. First, what is B Corp and how do you get certified? Secondly on B Corp, I will go into the framework that it gives us for continuous improvements. B Corp resonates with what we are doing at Danone because it's not only about financial parameters; its also a certification of how you manage your employees, your impact on communities, and the environment. I think it's an interesting topic to see how B Corp works and how certification can help improve your business strategy and business operations.
Why should people attend the Green Business Forum? What unique insights or opportunities do you think attendees will gain, especially for businesses looking to align with green initiatives?
I think it's a great initiative. It's a local forum, it's about Cambodia, and Cambodia is in a super exciting moment in its development. The government wants to develop the country in a sustainable way within its transition to a green economy, aligned with sustainable development goals (SDG). But that's also quite complex and it’s quite a challenge. I think this seminar will give us some insights on how that could be done and some insights on how theory can be translated in practise.
The forum will also be a great opportunity to network with multiple stakeholders – industry leaders, policymakers, international organisations, UNDP, ADB, the World Bank, the European Union – to share experiences, to network, to make connections.
It's also about understanding how the Cambodian government is trying to transition SDGs into policies. By doing so, I think the forum can act as an invitation to all of us there to see how we can work together – NGOs, international organisations, private sector, the government – how we can promote and further facilitate this transition towards a green economy and towards a more sustainable future for Cambodia.