Programme 2020

Jenny secured a position as a translater fresh from business school for a purchaser who said all the wrong things. When he realized that she winged the translations, she got a purchaser position at a German construction company. This was the beginning of her sourcing journey. She quite recently came from a great company that built affordable housing for those on the salary level of a preschool teacher, to a company that wants to positively impact the climate and promises to be a good company. Both very excellent companies but with the difference that today she has the luxury to go to work at Oatly and know that she makes an actual impact on people´s health and our earth .

Will received a Ph.D in glass manufacturing technology from the University of Cambridge in 2000, and has been leading the development of materials and packaging for FMGC companies ever since. First with Procter & Gamble, then Coty, and since 2018 heading the pack development team for Britvic, he has designed and optimised packs for brands as diverse as Lenor and Gucci. A believer in data-driven environmentalism he sees the greatest challenge of his current role to be supporting the transformation of packaging into a part of the future low-carbon, low waste, circular economy.

Luis Carlos Chacón leads the BusinessCase team, a Boutique-Global-Firm that works with multinational FMCG's identifying emerging and future business opportunities. Also, has been a columnist for Forbes Latin America for several years, and currently pursuing a postgraduate degree in Global Business at the University of Oxford (where previously graduated in Strategy and Innovation), his educational background also includes studies at Stanford, The University of Manchester, and Houston University. In business, he has worked for more than eighteen years for the global and regional operations of FMCG’s such as The Coca-Cola Company, Colgate-Palmolive, Diageo, Kellogg’s, Unilever, AB InBev among many others. Global traveller, eternal student, avant-garde thinker, business consultant, writer, and researcher, related to topics such as economics, storytelling, investment, retail, futures, semiotics, creativity, business competitive, globalization strategy, design thinking and behavioural sciences.

Marius finds his career background in Israel in the Home Audio industry. He witnessed first hand the market transformation to personal audio products and the way in which this shifted the industry and the brands that grew from it. After moving to the food and beverage industry, he has been inspired by the changes he has witnessed in consumer behaviour, which now leans towards healthier and more environmentally friendly choices. He saw this as an opportunity fir new companies to enter the global beverage market. At Birstona Mineral Water Company he works hard to achieve healthy and sustainable products, based on the highest quality water resources and advanced technology, with a view to becoming a global player in the industry.

Head of the packaging quality team in Essential Dairy & Plant Based Division, covering 30 Manufacturing plants , 200 supplier sites for > 1Bln spend. Extended QFS experience developed in various roles of co-man and supplier management in PepsiCo and Danone, ensuring the right quality standards for materials and suppliers.

Nikhil is the Co-Founder and COO of MIT spinoff Graviky Labs Inc. Graviky is currently actively capturing air pollution and recycling it into inks used by various industries, artists around the world. Prior to this, Nikhil ran a business and tax advisory based out of Mumbai practice where he advised several large corporations, not-for profit organizations and startups. He continues to assist the not-for profits as an advisor. Before this, Nikhil was associated with Ernst & Young. Nikhil’s core competencies include business development, client relations, operational controls, cross-border taxation. Nikhil thrives in managing discipline in unstructured environments and is interested in reinterpreting the way organizations do business. Nikhil was amongst 100 Leading Global Thinkers at Foreign Policy Washington DC 2016.

Robbert Slooten is sustainability program manager at Signify, the world leader in lighting formerly known as Philips Lighting. In this role, Robbert now oversees a sustainable packaging program, driving global multidisciplinary project teams to identify and implement non-plastic packaging solutions. Prior to his current role, Robbert managed two of Signify’s Brighter Lives, Better World commitments - zero carbon and zero waste. He was responsible for building Signify’s carbon emissions reduction and offsetting strategy. Under his direction, Signify completed the first-ever virtual Power Purchase Agreement in Poland and was the first corporate to apply IRECs in the Gulf region. Robbert studied Industrial Engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology, where he mastered in Innovation Management with a focus on Sustainable Energy Technologies.

Thomas Marinelli is heading the Sustainable Design & Products program in Signify. Signify is a global leader in lighting, with recognized expertise in the development and application of innovative, energy-efficient lighting systems and services that improve people’s lives. Philips/Signify have focused on environmental sustainability since the 1970s. Mr. Marinelli is responsible for driving Sustainability strategic priorities towards product businesses, identify energy efficiency and other sustainable design opportunities for the lighting product portfolio, and identify business opportunities in making the Signify propositions more interesting and attractive for the customer. Mr. Marinelli has a PhD in heterogeneous catalysis and an MBA degree from the Rotterdam School of Management. He started his working career in The Coca-Cola Company where he had various assignments in product integrity and process improvement. In the past fifteen years he was responsible for vast variety of sustainability projects in several Royal Philips businesses before moving to his current position in Signify (formerly Philips Lighting).

Mr. Ashwani Kumar is currently Chief Technologist for Design & Packaging for India’s leading consumer goods company ITC Limited. He has over 29 years of in-depth experience in the area of Design, Packaging, Materials and related Machinery. His key competency is in putting together Design Strategy and ensuring an end to end solution working with a large cross functional team. He has been the chairman of the AsiaPack Summit for last three consecutive years. A key expert and with a flair for speaking, he has been a speaker at various international forums in the area of Packaging and Graphics Design. For the past several years, he has been the keynote speaker at the prestigious EuroPack Summit at Cannes and Monaco. He has also been a speaker at the International Holographic Conference, World Packaging Summit etc. His Contribution has also been in terms of a several write ups for ‘The Economic Times’ wherein he has enunciated theories and perspectives related to Design, the ‘T’ principle being one of them. He has been a member of the prestigious ‘India Design Council’ and has been contributing in his various capacities for Design propagation. An avid traveller and a keen photographer, Mr Kumar is one of the first in the country to start Nordic walking and has been propagating the benefits in his own way. Mr. Kumar’s mantra “Nothing is impossible”.