[2] Born 13 February 1947, Rotterdam, Burgmans studied business administration at Nyenrode in the Netherlands, and political and social sciences at Stockholm University in Sweden.

[4] Burgmans joined Unilever in 1972, working as marketing assistant at Lever, Netherlands on the dishwater detergent Sun.

Later, he held marketing and sales positions in the company's detergents businesses in Indonesia and the Netherlands.

[citation needed] In May 2017, an Amsterdam court rejected attempts by investors to remove Burgmans from the chairmanship of Akzo Nobel.

He is also co-chairman of the Global Commerce Initiative (GCI) and chairman of the Supervisory Boards of, WWF-Netherlands, the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague and the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam.