On January 1, 2026, Kirsten Konst became chief executive of BDO Netherlands, succeeding René Nelis after his forty years at the firm. She isthe first woman to hold the role. That is the milestone.
The more interesting fact arrived eleven months earlier. In February 2025, Konst joined BDO not as a future CEO, but as Chief Transformation Officer,a role created to accelerate the firm’s strategic and digital evolution. Elevenmonths later, the supervisory board chose her to run the entire company.
“The transformation seat is no longer a side road from the boardroom. Itis increasingly the route to it.”
Konst, born in 1974, did not arrive at BDO without preparation. Before joining the firm, she spent more than seven years on the executive board of Rabobank, where she led the integration of the local Rabobanks into a newcentral structure, one of the most consequential organisational rebuilds inDutch financial services in the last decade. Earlier in her career she heldsenior roles at ABN AMRO and in financial-sector consulting.
A Financieele Dagblad portrait of Konst, published shortly after her appointment, drew on colleagues who had worked alongside her at Rabobank. The pattern they described is unusual in a CEO profile. She does not lead through PowerPoint. She leads through depth, through site visits, through asking questions and listening to the answers. Her former chief-of-staff at Rabobank, Jacoline Verheul, recalled being asked repeatedly to “find out how this works” and “check how this fits together.” Ron Teerlink, then chair of Rabobank’s supervisory board, said her authority came from knowledge and local example, not slides.
That is a specific kind of executive. And it is the kind that boards across the Netherlands are increasingly choosing.
There is a pattern, visible across markets, that the BDO appointment confirms. Boards are no longer treating “transformation” as a discrete project, something that lives inside a programme office and ends. They are treating it as the permanent operating condition. That changes what they look for in a chief executive.
A leader equipped for that condition has to do three things at once:hold strategic direction, run digital and organisational change, and translate both into something the firm can actually execute. The job description is broader than it was a decade ago. The supply of executives who genuinely combine those capabilities is narrower. Boards that find one tend to keep her close, and then move her up.
Konst’s route mirrors what we have seen this spring at Dow, where Karen Carter spent decades inside the company in roles of progressively more operational complexity before being named CEO. Different country. Different industry. Same logic.
The numbers underneath this appointment are worth holding in mind. According to the SER’s most recent Monitor Gender balans, published in March2026 with figures for 2024, the share of women on Dutch executive boards rose from 15.3% to 17.3%, a two-point increase, but still leaving more than half of the country’s largest boards entirely male. The share of women on supervisory boards held flat at 26.1%. Within financial services specifically, the picture is brighter: 24.2% of executive board seats and 36.9% of supervisory board seats are now held by women.
The numbers tell a familiar story. Progress is real. It is also slow, fragile, and unevenly distributed. An appointment like Konst’s does not move the aggregate. But it does something the aggregate cannot capture. It shows the country a working example of the route, the role, and the leadership style that the next generation of Dutch boardroom decisions will be measured against.
“What changes a country’s boardroom is not the first appointment. It is the second, and the third, made along the same logic. That is the work the next decade is for.”
For the women on Leading Ladies’ membership rolls, including board members, executives, founders, senior partners, Konst’s appointment is not a celebration to be observed from a distance. It is a useful piece of intelligence.
The roles that lead to chief executive in 2026 are not always the obvious ones. Chief Transformation Officer. Chief Operating Officer. Heads of integration, of digital, of strategy execution. These are the seats from which boards are increasingly choosing their next leaders. They are also seats women are taking, often because they combine the strategic, operational, and human dimensions that boards now reward.
The strategic implication is direct. Visibility in transformation work, owning a portfolio of complex, cross-functional, measurably high-stakes change, is becoming a leading indicator of who reaches the top. For senior women already shaping these portfolios, the lesson is to make that work visible, defensible, and recognised. For the women advising them, mentoring them, or sponsoring them, it is to ensure those roles are framed as CEO-track, because that is increasingly what they are.
Kirsten Konst’s appointment at BDO Netherlands is a signal of where the logic is moving. Dutch boards are quietly redefining the executive profile they reward. That redefinition is good news for women whose careers have already been built around the kind of complex, integrative work that the new profile rewards. The work of the next decade is to make sure the second and third appointments arrive.
That is the work this platform exists for.
Sources: BDO Nederland press release (January 2026); Accountant.nl (January 2026); Accountancy Vanmorgen (January & March 2026); Consultancy.nl (January 2026); Financieele Dagblad portrait via Accountancy Vanmorgen (March 11, 2026); SER Scorecard 2026 / Monitor Genderbalans Dutch
