Nikos Grammatikos – Get to know our VAB member
We are delighted to welcome Nikos Grammatikos to the VAB community. Based in Athens, Nikos brings to our organisation more than twenty years of senior leadership experience across Southeast Europe in FMCG, retail and B2B consumer services. His career includes transformative commercial and operational roles at Procter & Gamble, A B Vassilopoulos, the Greek branch of Ahold Delhaize, and as Deputy General Manager at The MART, the B2B division of the Sklavenitis Group, Greece’s largest retail employer.
He has led strategic transformation across pricing architecture, procurement and supply chain optimisation. He has also overseen multibillion-euro P & Ls and consistently delivered results in highly competitive environments. Nikos holds a Board Director Certification from the Corporate Governance Institute and recently completed the AI and Career Empowerment program from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. He joins the VAB community with a strong focus on applying operational depth and governance discipline in advisory and non-executive roles across consumer-driven sectors.
Why have you chosen a board career as part of your professional evolution? What skills would you bring to a board advisor or NED role?
It is about perspective and stewardship. After more than two decades in complex commercial environments, I have come to appreciate deeply the strategic role of sound governance in building resilient companies. As a board member, you are not there to operate the business but to enable its leadership. You bring clarity when others are deep in execution and you help maintain focus on long-term value. I bring operational insight from margin-sensitive sectors and a transformation mindset grounded in reality. My goal is to be a pragmatic, commercially literate advisor who understands the tension between growth and control and can help executive teams navigate both.
What is the biggest challenge governance and advisory boards face at the moment? What issue might they be overlooking?
Too many boards still operate with outdated assumptions. They risk becoming irrelevant if they do not evolve their understanding of risk, talent and technology. Particularly with the rise of artificial intelligence, we are witnessing a shift as significant as the invention of the printing press. Boards must stay close to emerging trends and integrate this perspective into strategy formation. This is not just about digital governance. It is about seeing how AI will reshape cost structures, value chains and even how leadership is exercised. Governance must keep pace or risk becoming a bottleneck instead of an enabler.
Which type of board director or advisor role would excite you the most?
I am sector-rooted but not sector-bound. The ideal opportunity would be a company entering a phase of transformation: such as regional expansion, repositioning in the market or building structured governance for the first time. I am particularly interested in mid- to large-scale companies in FMCG, retail or consumer-adjacent logistics. Businesses that are privately held or founder-led are especially interesting when they are looking to evolve. I am equally intrigued by investor-backed companies which find themselves at an inflection point where data, technology or AI-driven supply chain insights can create disproportionate value.
What person or material has been your greatest inspiration for board-level learning? Where do you seek information to fuel your quest to become a world-class director or advisor?
I am inspired by a mix of formal learning and real-world pattern recognition. The Board Director Certification from the Corporate Governance Institute provided a strong governance foundation, while the AI and Career Empowerment programme from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business sharpened my views on how AI will affect the boardroom. Two recent publications stand out.
The first is It’s Time for Boards to Take AI Seriously from Harvard Business Review. The second is How Public-Company Boards Can Thrive by Adopting Private Equity Practices, also from McKinsey. These are especially relevant for boards in Greece and Southeast Europe where private sector governance is increasingly shaping public sector leadership.
