SPEAKERS
Analisa Winther
Event Host
Analisa Winther is an ecosystem developer for the future of food. In her coaching practices, she works with agrifood entrepreneurs helping them to attract the right investors. She is also a venture scout for corporate innovation arms helping them to partner and invest in the ecosystem. Her clients have included IKEA, Novozymes, and Paulig amongst others. Analisa is a frequent speaker and the Host of the popular podcast Future Food, which shares stories of organizations building a better future through food.
Andy Zynga
CEO at EIT Food
Drives innovation in the food industry as CEO of EIT Food, has a track record of successfully building and transforming businesses.
Marie Brueser
Corporate Venture Manager at EIT Food
Dr. Marie Brueser is a Corporate Venture Manager at EIT Food. In her role, she connects Europe’s best startups with corporates to enable tangible next steps to occur, such as pilot projects, proof of concept studies, investments or scale-up trials, thereby working at the forefront of agrifoodtech innovation. Being impact- and mission driven, she is always looking for ways to connect people and organisations to create wins-wins to create a sustainable and future-fit food system.
Kari Tronsmo
Open Innovation Leader at Danone
Food chemist and innovation professional in the European food industry. Having held various roles spanning from research, product development, innovation leadership and category management, for >20 years in 4 countries, I’m now in charge of Open Innovation at Danone and actively involved with EIT Food. Working from within on the farm-to-fork transformation towards a sustainable food system, I leverage my expertise in food technology and innovation leadership to seed and foster partnerships between corporates, startups and academics.
Sonia Huppert
IFF - Global Innovation Marketing Leader, RE-IMAGINE PROTEIN®
Sonia Huppert is Global Innovation Marketing Leader, RE-IMAGINE PROTEIN® at IFF, leading the industry roadmap for growth in alternative proteins. She has deep insight into and broad experience in food technology, product development, business development and strategic marketing. She has more than 25 years of experience in the food and beverage industry, turning ideation into successful innovation that is consumer-oriented and customer-driven.
Anna-Teresa Geß
Senior Innovation Architect at NEDGEX
NEDGEX is the digital incubator unit of the NETZSCH Group. In her role, she is building up the ecosystem for the NEDGEX Hub in Munich, driving innovative ideas and leveraging knowledge from new technologies. Anna-Teresa studied mechanical engineering at the Technische Universität München. She combines the technical knowledge with experience in developing and managing new digital products and business models in various industries. She is passionate about startup culture and new rising markets such as the alternative proteins.
Mario Augusto Maia, CFA
Managing Partner at Cogent Venture Partners
An agri-food and sustainability investing pioneer, Mario has nearly 2 decades of global investment experience across agricultural and food ingredient systems. Investing across multiple funding stages within private and public listed markets as both an institutional and corporate investor, Mario has held senior and executive positions at Novozymes, where he built and led their CVC arm, CFSGAM, where he helped establish and run one of the world’s first global agribusiness funds, and Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, where he headed the Equities Research Division for Agri & Food, Chemicals, Packaging and ESG. A dual Australian and Brazilian National, Mario lives in Copenhagen where he is the Managing Partner of Cogent Venture Partners / Continuity.
Ludovic Reysset
Head of Alternative.s (EU plant-based platform) at SparkFood
Ludovic has worked 25 years for Danone in different roles such as General Manager Portugal, Global VP Sales, Sales Director in Japan, Sales Director in Italy, Head of Sales Brazil,… Now Ludovic is leading Sparkfood Alternative.s for SONAE with the aim to create a European supplier of healthy, delicious & sustainable food products.
Imran Afzal
Open Innovation Lead EU at Mondelez
Imran is part of the Open Innovation team at Mondelez. He helped shape the EIT Food Mission Net Zero final report. Imran is passionate about start-up/corporate collaborations and believes they play an essential role in decarbonising the food system.
Jamie Crummie
Co-founder at Too Good to Go
Jamie Crummie trained as a lawyer, having studied a LLB in Law at Leeds University and a master’s in Human Rights Law LLM at Queen’s Mary before pursuing his mission of fighting food waste. He is the co-founder of Too Good To Go, the world’s largest marketplace for surplus food. Jamie was named as an Obama Leader in 2023, Sustainability Entrepreneur of the Year at the GB Entrepreneur Awards 2022, a Trailblazing Activist in Forbes’ the 50 Next class of 2021, One Young World’s Entrepreneur of the Year in August 2020, and one of Forbes 30 Under 30 in Europe in February 2019.
David Taylor
Head of EMEA Sales and Business Development at Agritask
David is an award-winning sustainable supply chain consultant specialising in sustainable agriculture and supply optimization through digital transformation. David joined Agritask in early 2023 as their Head of EMEA, helping food and beverage businesses leverage their unique influence and scale to drive environmental, social, and commercial sustainability.
Thomas van den Boezem
Senior Associate at PeakBridge (FoodSparks®)
Thomas is a Senior Associate at PeakBridge, a global FoodTech fund manager. He focuses on early-stage investments in Europe and Israel. Before PeakBridge, Thomas worked in investment roles at EIT Food and Innovation Industries. He is based in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Narjis Chakir
RisingFoodStars Scaleups Network Programme Lead
Narjis is currently leading the EIT Food RisingFoodStars programme, a network of 30+ aspiring scaleUps in the Agtech and Foodtech spaces across Europe. As an advocate for transformative change in the agrifood industry, she is driven by a mission to create an inclusive future of food. With a background in food and innovation and a passion for systemic impact, she believes in the importance of meaningful connections, creating opportunities for scaleUps and facilitating the collaboration between the whole ecosystem including startups, investors, corporates, universities, research centres and public institutions as a core driver to scale impact and reshape the future of our food system. Narjis holds an engineering degree and an MBA with a major in innovation and entrepreneurship and has been working in various marketing and innovation roles in leading agrifood FMCGs.
Maija Itkonen
CEO & Co-Founder of Onego Bio
Maija is a designer, innovator, creator, third time founder who has built and exited two tech companies – and one of the movers and shakers in the alternative protein field. Currently she’s acting as CEO and Co-Founder of Onego Bio, a food-biotech company producing egg proteins via precision fermentation.
Mary McCarthy
Partner at Sofinnova Partners
Mary joined Sofinnova Partners in 2023 as a Partner in the Industrial Biotech Strategy. She uses her extensive experience and network to help identify the most promising early-stage companies developing biotech-enabled sustainable solutions in agriculture, food, chemicals, and materials. Before joining Sofinnova Partners, Mary was a Partner at Brightlands Venture Partners (BVP), where she was the Fund Manager of the BVP Renewable Chemistry Fund and served on various boards. Mary holds a PhD in chemistry from University College Dublin, Ireland and held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands and the Max Planck Institute für Kohlenforschung, Germany.
Christina Richardson
Founder & chief-firestarter at weare3Sixty and Entrepreneurship Fellow at University College London
Having spent almost a decade as a tech-founder herself, Christina knows first-hand the challenges of leading a fast growth startup, and now dedicates her time to fuelling the humans behind these startups, making sure that they have the skills and support to thrive not just survive on the growth journey. When you join weare3Sixty, you join hundreds of other founders uniting to problem-solve together every single month too.
Adam Askew
Co-founder & CTO at CattleEye
Adam is the co-founder and CTO at CattleEye, where he is accountable for the company's technological strategy, ensuring that it aligns with the overall vision and goals of the organisation. He leads the R&D org, fostering an environment of collaboration and innovation, and empowering them to deliver cutting-edge solutions that meet the needs of customers.
