The future of food conference

John Bell is the ”Healthy Planet” Director in DG Research & Innovation. He is responsible for leading the Research and Innovation transitions on Climate Change within planetary boundaries, Bioeconomy, Food Systems, Environment and Biodiversity, Oceans and Arctic, Circular Economy, Water and Bio-based innovations. This includes harnessing the investments of 10bn Horizon Europe, Circular Bioeconomy, the EU Bioeconomy Strategy, and Governing Board of 3.7bn in Bio-based Industries Joint Undertaking, as well as delivering policy initiatives as FOOD2030, and the All Atlantic Ocean Research Alliance.

Luisa Crisigiovanni is the head of Altroconsumo, the most representative independent consumers’ association in Italy with more than 359,000 members in 2018. Luisa is also part of the Executive Board of BEUC – The European Consumers organisation, and its Treasurer since 2015. Separatelyn she is an AC representative at the National consumer council of the Ministry of Development. Luisa has been dealing with consumers’ law for more than 25 years and serves as advocate for consumers rights at national and international level.

Luke Disney is an experience senior executive with a 20-year track record in Europe, Africa and North Africa. He currently works with Rabobank, a cooperative bank that focuses on international business and rural activities. Previously he led the INSEAD Centre for Social Innovation and spent 13 years as a social intra/entrepreneur. Disney was part of the ground-breaking partnership between the United Nations World Food Programme and TNT Express focused on fighting global hunger. He also founded North Star Alliance, an award-winning social enterprise uniting more than 180 governments, businesses and civil society actors reach highly mobile populations in Africa with essential healthcare services to help stop the spread of HIV and other communicable diseases across the continent.

Linda Grieder is lawyer by training and entrepreneur by heart. She founded RethinkResource in 2016, a fast growing clean-tech start-up in Switzerland. RethinkResource is an agency for upcycling innovation and additionally offers one of the first cross-industry marketplaces for industrial waste- and side-streams. Secondary materials and circular economy thus build her main area of interest and expertise. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Linda specialized in IP law and was mainly concerned with the impact of changes in society on law.

Cecile Huet helps lead one of the world’s largest civilian programme in robotics, which is responsible for assisting beneficial robotics and AI developments across all of Europe. In her current role, she has been at the heart of the Communication on Artificial Intelligence for Europe, the Coordinated Plan on Artificial Intelligence and the Communication on Building Trust in Human-Centric Artificial Intelligence. Prior to her work in the Commission, she specialised in signal processing. In 2015, she was selected as one of the “25 women in robotics you need to know about”.

Prior to joining Friends of Europe, Dharmendra Kanani was director of policy at the European Foundation Centre (EFC). He was the England director at the Big Lottery Fund, the largest independent funder in the UK and fourth largest in the world. Dharmendra has held senior positions in the public and voluntary sectors and advisor to numerous ministerial policy initiatives across the UK.

*Consultant at Friends of Europe.

Gert Meijer has held a number of senior positions in the food and health sector throughout his career. He has worked at Nestlé for the past six years, where he helps provide regulatory and nutrition knowledge to help support innovation. Meijer is also the Chairman of the European Technology Platform for the food sector “Food for Life”. Before joining Nestlé, Gert worked at the National Institute of Public Health in The Netherlands and then for Unilever R&D as global Vice-President Nutrition & Health. Since 2012, he is a visiting professor at the University of Ulster (UK), focusing on the application of nutritional sciences in the food industry.

Hélène Miller is a legal expert with more than a decade of experience in Israel and France. She recently joined Aleph Farms, a food-tech startup company that produces cell-grown meat that resembles conventional meat. Previously, she worked as a lawyer and a consultant in major law firms in the regulatory life sciences field, including Dentons, Norton Rose and DLA Piper. Her areas of expertise include European regulation, marketing authorisations, market access, labelling and advertising of regulated products, and bioethics issues.

Alexandra Nikolakopoulou is a food law expert with more than a decade of experience in the European Commission’s DG SANTE. She currently heads the unit responsible for food information and composition and food waste. Throughout her career, she has dealt with issues relating to food labelling and general food law. More specifically she was responsible for the EU Regulation on the provision of food information to consumers. She has also worked with the legal unit of the former DG SANCO and as an advisor at EuroCommerce, the European association of retail and wholesale companies.

Pekka Pesonen is a qualified agronomist and leading representative of European farmers and agri-cooperatives, speaking for more than 70 national farming organisations from across Europe. He previously worked as state secretary for the Finnish ministry for agriculture and forestry. Pesonen also holds extensive professional experience in lobbying at the EU level on behalf of Finnish farmers, forest owners (MTK and SLC) and agri-forestry cooperatives (Pellervo). In the 1990s, he worked in the sales and marketing department of Valio, a Finnish dairy company. Pesonen has also been a member of several high-level advisory groups concerning EU policy preparation.

Passionate about food and health, Brij Sahi currently leads SwissDeCode, an organisation which makes use of DNA detection solutions to improve food safety. He has previously held several senior executive and leadership positions in the airline & aerospace sector and the IT & telecom fields. He has extensive experience in Europe, China and India.

Marco Sánchez is a renowned development economist and a leading figure in the FAO, where he heads its flagship reports, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World and The State of Food and Agriculture. Sánchez has extensive experience in the United Nations, having worked with the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and the Development Programme. He has also been a consultant for the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and has supported lecturing and research activities at various universities in the Netherlands and Costa Rica.

Gijs is a Dutch civil servant with nearly two decades of experience in the European institutions. In his current position, he focuses at the future prospects of the EU’s agricultural policy. He has worked since 2008, in different capacities, on agricultural policy reform in this Directorate-General. He first joined the European Commission in 2005 at the Directorate-General for Health and Consumers. Prior to joining the Commission, he worked at the European Parliament as a parliamentary assistant.

Koko Warner manages the UN Climate Secretariat’s Vulnerability subdivision where she guides the adaptation knowledge hub, helping to scale up adaptation action, and the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform. Warner is an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lead author for the Special Report on Climate Change and Land, and 5th Assessment Report on climate impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Previously, she was a founder and Executive Director of the Munich Climate Insurance Initiative and Head of Research on Environmental Migration and Social Resilience at UN University in Bonn. In 2014, she was named one of the top 20 women making waves in the climate change debate by the International Council of Science.

Since 2018, Anna Wissmann has been working to build the Food Policy Council Network, which currently counts 56 members across cities and towns across Europe. Wissmann was one of the first to be employed in the organisation, having been appointed the coordinator of the inaugural FPC in Germany. Prior to this, she worked for IFOAM-Organics International for several years, supporting the global organic movement through advocacy and leadership development. Wissmann’s academic background is in development and human geography.

Wolfgang Wohlgemuth holds over 30 years of experience in advanced research and development at Siemens Digital industries. He has contributed to innovative solutions for products and services in various domains of factory automation and digitalisation, as well as leading projects on artificial intelligence and knowledge-based systems. His special focus is on the practical usage of augmented and virtual reality technologies for intuitive future human-machine interaction. Over time, he has established a long-term experience in national and European funded activities, including the participation and coordination of consortia with up to 20 partners from industry and research.

Andy Zynga is an international entrepreneur who currently heads the pan-European consortium for food sector innovation. Before joining EIT Food, Andy built and turned around several businesses in Europe and the USA, and most recently engineered a successful exit for NineSigma, which he ran for 10 years. The majority of NineSigma’s clients are from the agri-food industry. Other stations in his career include KPMG Consulting and Vanco plc.