Early life He received a bachelor's degree from the
Hotelschool The Hague, and then an
MBA at the
University of Groningen.
Heineken He began as a graduate at
Amsterdam-based
Heineken International NV, the third largest brewer in the world, in 1987. Bolland worked in various international management positions in Africa and Central Europe before joining the Heineken board in 2001. He became
chief operating officer in 2005. Bolland has been credited with both building and rolling out the Heineken brand internationally.
Morrisons In September 2006, he was appointed CEO of the UK supermarket chain
Morrisons. Morrisons had acquired
Safeway in 2004 creating a 130,000 people strong retail conglomerate in the UK. The merger initially proved unsuccessful. Bolland joined after five profit warnings with a brief to turn round the company. By 2008, Morrisons had achieved strong growth in both market share and profits, and in 2008, Bolland was announced as
The Times "Businessman of the year". Under his guidance, Morrisons "...gained significant market share from rivals". During September 2011, he announced a new look store environment for M&S's UK stores, with a plan to complete the roll out to the entire UK estate by mid-2013. In 2011, M&S returned to France after a 10-year absence and also started the development of a new digital platform that was launched in February 2014. In 2011, Bolland received an honorary doctorate from
York St John University. In January 2016, it was announced that Bolland would be retiring as CEO of Marks and Spencer effective April 2016, and would be replaced by
Steve Rowe.
Blackstone In September 2016, Bolland joined Blackstone as Senior Managing Director and Head of European Portfolio Operations for its Private Equity business. He subsequently was appointed Chairman of Blackstone Group International Partners (BGIP) in 2020 before he stepped down in January 2024 to dedicate more time to Unicef and The Learning Passport.
Founder of Charitable Innovations : Movement to Work and The Learning Passport In 2012, Bolland founded “Movement to Work” in response to the Croydon riots. The Charity was set up to give disadvantaged young people (with disabilities, no education, ex-offenders etc) an opportunity of a work placement and work. Bolland set up the Charity’s structure and was Chairman for 5 years. Since 2013 Movement to Work has delivered 225,000 work placements to the unemployed with over 89% resulting in full time employment or education. In 2016, during the Syria crisis, Bolland in his role as Vice President UNICEF UK visited refugee camps in Jordan to better understand the delivery of education to refugees. Subsequent to the visit, Bolland developed an innovative digital education concept for refugee children, and children with limited access to education, to which he brought UNICEF and Cambridge University. The concept has been further developed in partnership with Microsoft, and has become “The Learning Passport” (of which Bolland is Founder Chairman). The Learning Passport was nominated as one of the top 100 innovations of 2021 by Time Magazine and as of March 2025 was used across 47 countries and by more than 10 million children. ==Other activities==