Feb 16, 2020
Ira Pastor, ideaXme exponential health ambassador, interviews Dr. Ellen de Brabander, Senior Vice President Research and Development at PepsiCo.
Ira Pastor Comments:
Today we are going to segue into the food industry, which is a fascinatingly complex and diverse set of businesses that supplies most of the food consumed by the global population. In 2020, food, needless to say, is much more than just calories. It is, of course, still about about calories, but food is also about nutrition, health and wellness (and in some cases medicine), agriculture, sustainability, and even national safety and security.
Today we are joined by a wonderful guest that we are going to discuss a wide range of these and related topics with.
Dr. Ellen de Brabander:
Dr. Ellen de Brabander is Senior Vice President Research and Development at PepsiCo (the American multinational food, snack, and beverage company), and currently leads the global R&D functions including the Food Safety, Quality, External Innovation, Strategy & Portfolio Management, Nutrition Science, Sensory and Regulatory Affairs teams.
She is also a member of the Board of Governors at the New York Academy of Sciencesand has served as Treasurer and board member of the International Life Science Institute of North America which is US-Canadian organization that brings together scientists from government, academia and industry to uphold the scientific integrity and objectivity of nutrition and food safety science in order to ethically improve food systems for the betterment of public health.
Additionally, Dr. de Brabander has also served as the interim and founding CEO of EIT Food (part of the EU’s European Institute of Innovation and Technology), which is a unique $1.5 Billion Euro innovation consortium with more than 50 partners from industry and academia, focused on transforming the food sector by designing and delivering unique and high impact research, innovation, business creation and education programs.
Dr. de Brabander has worked in a variety of industries, including pharmaceuticals, health/nutrition, coatings and chemicals. Dr. Ellen de Brabander's Career Prior to joining PepsiCo, she was the Chief Scientific Officer and Global Head of Research, Development and Regulatory Affairs for Merial Limited (currently part of Boehringer Ingelheim), where she led a global team to discover and develop innovative animal health products for companion and production animals.
Prior to her role at Merial, she held executive R&D, regulatory, business strategy and program management positions at Intervet (currently Merck animal health division) and the specialty chemical company DSM. Dr. de Brabander earned her PhD cum laude in bio-organic chemistry from Leiden University in The Netherlands and completed post-doctoral work in molecular biology at MIT with Nobel Laureate H.G. Khorana. Her PhD has been awarded as best PhD for natural sciences from Leiden University (1990; Kock award); in 2000, she was awarded the Golden Medal from the Royal Dutch Chemical Society for being the best Dutch chemist under 40 years of age.
On this show we will hear from Dr. de Brabander:
About her background, how she became interested in science, chemistry and biology, and ultimately how she worked her way into the leadership roles of some of the world's largest chemical, pharma, and food companies. Her view of the food industry today, it's future, and many of the parallels she sees with big pharma (personalization, customization, and specialty indications versus blockbusters) as well as the importance of data management and of the startup innovator as a partner. Her thoughts on "big food" as a major player alongside "big pharma" in the health and wellness equation moving forward in the 21st century. About her work in building / leading EIT Food, and ILSI North America, and the importance of the public-private partnership model in the $8 trillion food industry. Big Food's role in the sustainability equation as it pertains to feeding a future world of 9-10 billion. Her role and the importance of the compliance function in industries that are taking on more regulatory burdens.
Credits: Ira Pastor interview video, text, and audio.
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