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More to come
More speakers for the upcoming F&A Next edition will soon be published. Stay tuned!
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Adam Anders is managing partner at Anterra Capital. Adam has over 15 years experience in private equity and venture capital, having entered the sector as a senior operational executive for several venture capital funded businesses. Adam has held senior roles at Rabobank including as a director of Rabobank Private Equity and the managing director of Rabo Ventures.
Read more ›Prior to this Adam was with Ironbridge Capital, a Private Equity house in Sydney, Australia. Earlier in his career Adam worked as a management consultant with Bain & Co and as a commercial lawyer.
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Barbara Baarsma is CEO of the newly established Rabo Carbon Bank, an initiative to contribute to a more carbon neutral world on the fundaments of agroforestry. The ambition of the carbon bank is to develop an innovative carbon credits program by measuring the CO2 storage capacity of the planted trees in real time as a base for tradeable credits and a sustainable market place.
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Maarten Bosch is at the helm of the Dutch foodtech company Mosa Meat, a company that helps drive the transition from intensive animal agriculture to cellular agriculture. Mosa Meat is widely known for unveiling the world’s first cultured beef burger in 2013. In 2019 Maarten joined the companyto do what he does best, lifting start-ups off the ground and make them grow. But at Mosa Meat his excitement is primarily in making a positive impact on climate change, animal welfare, and food shortage.
Maarten brings a strong commercial sense, and extensive managerial experience, having previously led several larger and fast-growing companies in various consumer electronics businesses. Maarten was involved in several start-ups, successfully attracting resources and lifting them off the ground. Before this, Maarten served as CEO at Optelec (now Vispero), which he grew into the world’s leading manufacturer of assistive technologies for the blind and visually impaired. Maarten has a Master’s in Industrial Design Engineering from the Delft University of Technology. He is incredibly excited about the opportunity at Mosa Meat to create an outstanding business, and most importantly to have a huge impact on climate change, food shortage and animal welfare.
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Nicholas Fereday is executive director in Rabobank’s research department in New York, specializing in food and consumer trends. Prior to joining Rabobank, he was a senior economist and VP sales & marketing for LMC International, an economic agri-food consultancy company. Before that he worked for the Natural Resources Institute in the UK, The Department of Agriculture in Papua New Guinea (courtesy of the Overseas Development Institute) and was also a journalist for The Economist Intelligence Unit.
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Paul Gambill is the CEO and co-founder of Nori, the carbon removal marketplace. Nori partners with suppliers who sequester CO2 from the atmosphere and operates a market selling those carbon removals to companies who are negating their carbon footprints. In 2015, Paul established the first known community dedicated to carbon removal. He has over a decade of experience in software product management for clients including Nike, Showtime, Target, and Starbucks.
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Ken Giller is Professor Plant Production Systems, within WaCASA (the Wageningen Centre for Agroecology and Systems Analysis) at Wageningen University & Research. Ken’s research has focused on smallholder farming systems in sub-Saharan Africa, and in particular problems of soil fertility and the role of nitrogen fixation in tropical legumes, with emphasis on the temporal and spatial dynamics of resources within crop/livestock farming systems and their interactions.
Read more ›Ken is author of the standard text Nitrogen Fixation in Tropical Cropping Systems published in second edition in 2001. He leads a number of initiatives such as N2Africa (Putting Nitrogen Fixation to Work for Smallholder Farmers in Africa). He joined Wageningen University in 2001 after holding professorships at Wye College, University of London, and the University of Zimbabwe.
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Andrew D. Ive managing general partner of Big Idea Ventures. He created the company to solve the world’s biggest challenges by supporting the world’s best entrepreneurs. Andrew has invested in more early-stage / pre-seed food companies than any other investor worldwide.
Read more ›Andrew serves on the Advisory Board for Tufts Nutrition Council, is a Friedman School Entrepreneurship advisor, previously served on the Small Business Council of the Department of Trade and Industry advising the UK Government on entrepreneurship and high growth companies. A Harvard Business School graduate and Procter & Gamble brand management trained.
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Béla Jankovich de Jeszenice is active on the crossroads of agriculture, the environment and technical and social innovation. He is leading the operations of the family estate in Hungary. In addition, Béla is Chair of non-profit organization Commonland, founded to support restoration of 100 million hectares of degraded landscapes by 2040. Béla is an active investor, advisor to Anterra Capital and Board member of AgroVIR Kft, a regional leader in farm management software.
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Rens de Jong is a well-known speaker, event host and moderator in the Dutch business sector. He has the ability to increase the energy and enthusiasm in the room by connecting the audience. People in the audience described him as very energetic, witty and well-prepared. In 2013, Quote magazine named Rens one of the most popular event-moderators in The Netherlands. In 2014 he was nominated for “The day’s chairman of the year”. His specializations are innovation, sustainability, entrepreneurship and human capital. All in all a great host and moderator for F&A Next.
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Kees Kruythoff is a Dutch entrepreneur who has been at the helm of numerous different companies. For 27 years, he worked for Unilever. The last 8 years he was part of the global Unilever Executive team, first as President North America and following that, as President for the Global Home Care division. Currently, he is Chairman & CEO of The LiveKindly Collective. Kees is committed to building solutions that create a more sustainable and equitable world.
Read more ›Kees is passionate about the private sector as a force for good, and was proud to lead the implementation of the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, which was recognized as one of the 10 most prominent business leaders in Brazil in sustainability. He left Unilever in the middle of 2019 and became part of the founding team of IMAGINE. A for-benefit business and foundation, IMAGINE helps shift global industries to combat climate change and inequality.
At the beginning of 2020, Kees became the chairman and CEO of The Livekindly Collective. The company is made up of plant-based food brands (Fry’s Family Foods, Oumph!, LikeMeat, and No Meat), as well as Livekindly Media. The intent is to build the pre-eminent global plant-based food company and make plant-based living the new norm.
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Matt Marshall is Senior Director Corporate Strategy at Nutrien. The company developed a comprehensive carbon program that will help growers integrate the use of sustainable agronomic practices (including collection of farm and field-level data to reliably measure carbon and other sustainability outcomes) into their farm planning process by using Nutrien’s digital platform. At the end of the season, carbon outcomes will be verified using industry accepted standards, generating carbon credits available for purchase by Nutrien, other value-chain partners and cross-industry buyers, generating incremental profit for growers.
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Rob is a founding partner at AgFunder. AgFunder one of the world’s most active foodtech and agtech venture capital firms. Rob is a Forbes contributor and has also been published in TechCrunch, Harvard Business Review, Financial Post, and twice in Nature journals. Rob has been invited to chair, speak, and keynote at many global conferences on food & agriculture, technology, and fintech.
Read more ›In 2014, Forbes Magazine named Rob to their list of ‘Up-And-Comers’, and the White House has extended special invitations to White House-sponsored events. He’s a judge for the National Ag Innovation Prize, the Verizon’s $6M IoT Award for 2015, and sits on the advisory committee of the Ag Innovation Showcase, the world’s first and longest-running AgTech conference.
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Tom Peeters is co-founder & CEO of Crisp. Launched in 2018, Crisp is the supermarket-app that brings better food, delivering fresh, seasonal and affordable products from hundreds of independent producers to families all over the Netherlands. With an award-winning brand, exponential growth and a team of 500+, Crisp is building the fundament for a category winner in the largest consumer industry.
Read more ›Before Crisp, Tom was co-founder of ecommerce company Westwing (IPO in Frankfurt in 2018). Prior to Westwing, Tom worked in London as M&A advisor, and as a student he co-founded the Restaurant Week. He is a passionate entrepreneur and leader of people, highly driven to build something that matters.
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Alexander Ribbink is General Partner at Keen Ventures Partners. He has over 20 years of experience in worked extensively in fast moving consumer goods and technology industries. Key areas of functional expertise include branding, international growth and market entry, innovation and strategy.
Read more ›Before joining Keen Venture Partners Alexander was a general partner at Prime Ventures, where he invested in and served as board member of, among others, Takeaway.com. Prior to Prime, he was board member and Chief Operating Officer of TomTom, the personal navigation company. He lead the international expansion of TomTom and was part of the leadership team that IPO-ed the company. Before his time at TomTom he held a number of senior directors’ psitions at MARS Inc. and Unilever NV. Alexander holds an MA degree in Law from the University of Amsterdam and an MBA degree from the Rotterdam School of Management.
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Hadar Sutovsky is VP External Innovation at ICL group, one of the top tier corporates in the field of agriculture, food and engineered materials. She is dedicated to establishing and managing the ICL PLANET Startup Hub, which is the vehicle which ICL choose to invest and work with innovative companies, in the domains of crop nutrition and food, to synergize with their novelty and to short-cut their way to global play.
Read more ›Before joining ICL, Hadar was Managing Partner in Aquagro Fund, a dedicated impact investment management firm that seeks to generate strong financial returns by deploying capital in game changing technology companies addressing critical global needs in the fields of smart agriculture, food and water. Among her responsibilities, she implemented impact investments strategies to the Aquagro Group.
Along her professional path Hadar lead Innovation scouting in areas of AgriFood & Sustainability for the Global Unilever Open Innovation Hub, she was Global Segment Manager and Corporate Open Innovation Leader at Frutarom, a global leader of flavors and fine ingredients for the foodtech industry and the 2nd largest Israeli “exit,” of approximately $7.1 billion.
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Wilco Schoonderbeek is lead Scale-up & Innovation at Invest NL. For almost two decades he has supported companies manage their risks and capture their potential using technology, innovation and entrepreneurship. He has done this from many sides of the table: corporate, SME, investor or advisor. He has been active in fundraising, has been leading investment opportunities through various stages of the process, including sourcing, initial screening, due-diligence, structuring, execution, closure and portfolio management.
Read more ›After many years of passionate work in public and private sector and a number of investments in disruptive innovations Wilco feels he is uniquely positioned to provide guidance in managing challenges and understand the profound changes that will be ushered by advances in technology.
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With Scaleupnation, Anieke Wierenga helps scale young, innovative ventures in Food and Agriculture, Mobility, and Health-tech. They focus on enterprises that really punch beyond their weight: impact scale-ups. In other words, innovative, for-profit businesses that have disproportionate potential to change the world for the better, add new employment and create economic value. Anieke combines more than 20 years hands-on experience in innovation strategy and execution (Corbion, Unilever and Schlumberger), innovation consultancy and innovation governance with a PhD in Chemistry (Utrecht, 1997), a Masters degree in Advanced Change Methodologies (SIOO, 2011) and an education in Corporate Governance (ESAA 2020).