DHL Express Europe CEO Mike Parra talks like a riled-up coach on the verge of a championship, with the kind of motivational cadence you’d expect from Brené Brown, only more urgent. Yet his leadership mirrors the company’s culture, with a people-development system that feels more like that of a university than a logistics giant.

Parra’s perspective stems from four decades at DHL, which employs nearly 600,000 people across 220 countries. As of 2024, he took the reins of its international courier division, DHL Express, which tops the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For – Europe list .

“I never forget that I started sorting mail,” Parra says, which left him convinced that supervisors need deep preparation and support, not just technical skills. “We’ve always said that our supervisors

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