Gerard de Reuver (1956, Dutch) studied Pharmacology / Physiology and Biology in Utrecht. He started his career with the Swedish Pharmacia Biotechnology and started his own company in 1985. After he sold this in 1988 he has held various general management functions in Unilever (UK), Perstorp (Sweden), Zylipsis (UK), Gemini (NL) and PerkinElmer (USA). He was holding non-executive positions for the UK investment bank 3i in a number of Biotech and life science companies in UK and Germany before he joined DSM in 2002.