CONFIRMED Speakers

Roberta Bosurgi is the CEO of EVPA, the investing for impact community, since September 2020. She has over 20 years of international corporate and management consulting experience. Her previous role was at Novartis Foundation, where she led a collective impact initiative for cardiovascular health in low-income urban settings, building multi-sector private-public partnerships and working with social enterprises on the journey to scale and financial sustainability. She has also covered international roles in strategy, business operations and market access at Novartis, and led large change/transformation programmes with McKinsey&Co.

Angelo Riccaboni is Chairman of PRIMA Foundation, created by 19 Countries and the EC to fund agrifood innovation, located in Barcelona. He also chairs the Santa Chiara Lab, an innovation center at the University of Siena. Former Rector of the University of Siena from (2010-2016), he is a member of the Leadership Council of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Chair of the Regional Centre of the SDSN for the Mediterranean, Co-Chair of the SDSN Europe. A full Professor in Business Administration at the University of Siena, his main research interests relate to businesses’ governance and management systems for sustainability and to innovation in agrifood systems. He was Chair of the Association of Italian Rectors Foundation. He is also the Main Representative of the Italian Ministry for University of Research to the Mission Soil Health and Food within the Horizon Europe EC Programme.

Ivan Stefanic is a business development and technology transfer specialist with more than 30 years of international experience in research and business. Since 2013 he is EU IP Helpdesk Ambassador.

Ivan is the founding and executive director of TERA TEHNOPOLIS Ltd. established in 2002 - very efficient and well-reputed ‘one-stop for technology-based entrepreneurs in the region. Besides the strategic EU initiatives: EEN, Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs, and EIT Food - TERA promotes the entrepreneurial spirit and European values.

Ivan's signature program - Be the Role ModelTM was the 2017 National winner in European Entrepreneurship Promotion Award in the category: “Promoting the Entrepreneurial spirit“ and in 2018 in the category: “Investing in Entrepreneurial skills“. In 2021 - Be the Role ModelTM received outstanding recognition - becaming the best practice @ EU Knowledge Valorisation Platform.

Ivan is also a Full Professor at the Faculty of Agrobiotechnical Sciences Osijek in the field of economics and entrepreneurship in agribusiness, and a Leader of the Research Group Agriculture and Resource Economics and Entrepreneurship. He obtained B.Sc. and M.Sc. at the University of Osijek and Pd.D. at the University of Zagreb. Ivan was a visiting scientist at Universität für Bodenkultur, Wien; North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, and the University of Reading, the UK.

He is passionate about gamification of learning experiences, mentoring students and young entrepreneurs, and enterprising university.

Michiel de Ruiter is the chairperson of EIT Food’s Supervisory Board since February 2022.
His fascination with food began during his studies at the Agricultural University of Wageningen. After his early professional life working with McKinsey in Amsterdam, Sao Paulo and Brussels, he worked in various companies as CEO in Switzerland and in The Netherlands, in the field of early life nutrition and food ingredients.
Since September 2020, he has been active in various supervisory and advisory role, including in the food industry. Following his strong belief that companies have a major role to play in preserving this planet for future generations, he also became active in advising boards on sustainability.

Rakesh is R&D Director - Europe Sustainability and Northern Europe Foods at PepsiCo, one of the largest food and drink companies in the world, with brands including household names such as Pepsi, PepsiMAX, Lay’s, Quaker and Tropicana.

During his 15+ career with PepsiCo R&D, Rakesh has worked on leading brands across Developed and Developing geographies. He started his journey in 2007 in Australia and New Zealand working on Sakata Rice Crackers and Red Rock Deli brands, followed by Quaker across APAC, MENA and India markets with a focus on the product development as well as managing overall R&D agenda. Rakesh has been working in Europe since March 2020 and, other than managing R&D agenda for Northern Europe, is leading Europe Sustainability agenda in R&D focussing mainly on Positive Choices.

Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry and Food Science & Technology. Her objective has been to combine both degrees by applying R&D&i to the food sector. She began her professional career in the quality department of several food companies and later focused on innovation and sustainability when she started working at Bioazul in 2011, with projects such as NanoBAK2 and FRESH-DEMO, SuWaNu Europe and RichWater. She has always been interested in outreach and communication. This interest has led her to be trained in marketing and communication, both at a business and scientific level, assuming these tasks in the company, as well as in numerous European R & D projects, in which she has led the strategy of dissemination of results, developed the corporate identity and brand image, organized events, etc. She is currently actively working on several projects within the EIT-Food that combine innovation, training and public engagement actions such as DigiFresh, RIS Water Scarcity, InformPack and Helfood.

Dr. Simone K. Frey is the managing director of NUTRITION HUB. The think tank leverages the knowledge of its expert community to create reports on the future of food and nutrition reaching almost 30,000 professionals in Europe. With her team of experts Simone advises food companies in innovation, product and communication strategies. Simone studied Nutrition Science and Food Economics in Giessen, Vienna and New York, completed her PhD at the University of Potsdam and was a scholar at ESMT Business School.

Sasha is a lover of sustainability and innovation. This passion allows her to act as a FutureFoodMaker. She is currently pursuing her MSc in Business and Management at Stockholm School of Economics, allowing her to intern at Unilever.

Sasha is the cofounder and board member to Ecotone Renewables, transforming food waste into fertiliser and electricity. She has previously been a PreCOP26 Youth Delegate and cofounding coordinator for YOUNGO Local Conference of the Youth Cyprus and she holds a BSc in Decision Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Nigel Scollan is Director of The Institute for Global Food Security and Professor of Animal Science at Queens University, Belfast. The Institute addresses key challenges around (1) Farms of the Future: developing paradigm shifts in agricultural practices to enhance profitability and sustainability without compromising biodiversity and ecological function; (2) Global Food Integrity: use of state-of-the-art approaches (analytical, molecular, computational) to improve the safety of global food supply chains and prevent fraud and (3) Nutritional challenges of the twenty-first century: better understanding of how human diet impacts a range of health outcomes and development of intervention strategies to maximise wellbeing.

Professor Scollan conducted his PhD at The University of Edinburgh, followed by a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada before joining Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research, Aberystwyth in 1993 and subsequently Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS) Aberystwyth University in 2008. He held a numbers of posts at IBERS including Waitrose Professor of Sustainable Agriculture and Professor of Public Engagement with Science at Aberystwyth University, group leader Animal Systems and Director of Enterprise.

Professor Scollan’s research is primarily related to designing improved systems for ruminant livestock, through the use of improved nutrition and genetics to enhance the sustainability and efficiency of the production systems. Improving nutritional quality is an important aspect of the research. Professor Scollan works closely with producers and other key stakeholders across value chains.

Nigel is a Past President of the British Society of Animal Science and a Fellow of the Royal Agricultural Society in the UK and a Director of the Oxford Farming Conference.

Better known as Brusselsgeek, Jennifer has been a journalist in print, radio, and television for nearly 20 years, the last 8+ specialising in EU policy in the tech sector.

She has worked across a wide range of media, from editing a national daily paper in Malta to reporting on European affairs for Middle Eastern television, and has a wealth of experience in navigating the political quagmire of the EU. As well as an address book packed with insider sources and contacts in Brussels, Jennifer is skilled at translating EU policy-speak into understandable English.

Regularly listed as one of the top digital influencers in the EU bubble, Jennifer is a member of the Expert Council of the Good Technology Collective, is on the editorial advisory board of the Journal of Data Protection and Privacy, is on the also a GLG expert Council Member providing advice on EU Policy, and was named by Onalytica as one of the world’s Top 100 Influencers on Data Security 2016. She was also listed by Politico as one of the Top 20 Women Shaping Brussels in 2017.

She has written for some of the biggest names in media, including ArsTechnica, Computerweekly, TheNextWeb, Macworld, PCworld, and The Register. She regularly features as an expert on BBC radio, SkyNews and others, and hosts Brussels’ must-watch weekly roundup show TOTW for Euractiv.

Marta joined EIT Food in early 2022 and is Public Engagement Programme Manager.

She works on different projects that engage with consumers making sure that the consumer perspective is considered in all areas of EIT Food’s work.

She has spent the last 15 years working in projects related to the promotion of transparency mainly in Latin America and now in the agrifood sector.

Marta holds a degree in European Project Management and in Journalism.

Tiffanie Stephani is heading the Government Relations and External Communications at Yara Europe (cf. Yara European Footprint | Yara International), the market leader in plant nutrition in Europe. Truly inspired by Yara’s vision of a world without hunger and a planet respected, Tiffanie works actively to promote climate-friendly crop nutrition and zero-emission energy solutions such as green ammonia. She joined Yara Region Europe in January 2021.
Prior to this, Tiffanie has been working as Senior Agriculture and Environment Manager at Fertilizers Europe, representing the interests of the majority of mineral fertilizer manufacturers in the European Union, between March 2016 and December 2020. She started her career in European Government Relations and in the agriculture sector about 15 years ago as a policy officer in the European & environmental affairs department of the German Farmers’ Association (Deutscher Bauernverband, DBV) in Brussels. Tiffanie (a French native) holds a university degree in political science from “Sciences Po Lille” and a master's degree in European public management.

Fabienne Ruault joined EIT Food in 2018 and is Public Engagement Programme Manager.

She focuses on the implementation of EIT Food projects designed to engage with different audiences through sharing knowledge and creating dialogue and engagement.

She has spent the last 12 years working as a programme manager on diverse European Projects at the European Commission and at EIT Food. Fabienne has two master's degrees in European Studies and Law from the University of Strasbourg and the IEHEI.

Anna Macready, Associate Professor at the University of Reading’s School of Agriculture, Policy and Development is a psychologist and public health nutritionist specialising in consumer behaviour and marketing at the University of Reading. Anna has worked on EIT Food TrustTracker® infrastructure project since its inception in 2017. Her other research interests include consumer behaviour change, personalised nutrition, food waste and the co-production of healthy, sustainable food systems for disadvantaged communities.