Join us in 2023
The Food Innovation & Investment Summit 2022 explored key themes and trends such as plant-based food products with cleaner ingredients, sustainable foods and solutions to tackle food waste and extending shelf life, ‘food as medicine’, and the importance of collaboration and partnership to bring innovations to scale and make real impact on our food system.
We're excited to announce that the 2023 Food Innovation & Investment Summit dates will be May 23-24. Join us to discover how these trends have evolved throughout the year and explore the newest innovations that are working towards building a healthier and more sustainable food system!
Register your interest today and be the first to receive our 2023 agenda.
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What is the Food Innovation & Investment Summit?
We know there are several events and exhibitions for the food sector out there and we know they are good. However, you have told us there is something missing: an industry conference that shines a spotlight on fast-moving product and ingredient innovation, and that connects this innovation with investors facilitating partnerships and investment.
At the Food Innovation & Investment Summit you will hear plenary C-suite discussions focused on the macro trends impacting the food market including the consumer drive to shift our food system to make it more sustainable; scaling innovative foods to bring them to the mainstream; understanding what makes an attractive investment opportunity for investors and building partnerships.
Register your interest and be the first to hear about our 2023 agenda.
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2022 Innovation Showcase Finalists
Congratulations to all of our Finalists!
Discover our Finalists
2022 SPEAKERS
Melissa Cash
Denise Lefebvre
Ernst van Orsouw
Laura Zaim
Ido Savir
Ido has over 25 years of experience in developing and leading breakthrough technologies for the technology and biotech industries, addressing core challenges for transitioning to an industrialized, technology-driven, and sustainable future.
Ido led the design of one of the world’s first cross platform infrastructures for the mobile smartphone revolution, helping large corporations develop and distribute mobile based services and applications. The award-winning platform was licensed and implemented by banks, insurance companies and government departments around the world.
Ido launched and led SuperMeat in moving from lab scale culturing of cells to large scale meat production and commercialization.
Marvin Jiwan
Abigail Storms
Christina O'Keefe
Melanie Barteime
Suneer Sunny Jain
Garrett Ruhland
Maureen Rinkunas
Audrey Gyr
Brian Sylvester
Spencer Maughan
Lou Cooperhouse
Susan Bratton
Nathan Price
Mariette Abrahams
Victor Chen
Ranjan Sinha
Ari Melamud
Arturo Elizondo
Rahul Ray
Rahul Ray is a Senior Director at Tyson Ventures, the investment arm of Tyson Foods. Focused on deal flow and investment execution, Rahul brings a deep knowledge of investment strategy and management and experience in corporate finance to the Tyson Ventures team. He has more than a decade of experience ranging from hedge fund and private equity experience on Wall Street to corporate finance and strategy ecosystems. Rahul earned his MBA from Columbia Business School and his Masters of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Laura Braden
Dan Altschuler Malek
Dan Altschuler Malek is a Managing Partner at Unovis Asset Management, a global impact investment firm providing early-stage funding to entrepreneurs developing plant-based and cultured meat alternatives to foods derived from conventional animal agriculture including beef, chicken, pork, dairy, egg, fish, and shellfish products. The Unovis team has invested in more than 50 companies including Beyond Meats, Upside Foods, BlueNalu, Geltor, and Aleph Farms. As Managing Partner, Dan heads the firm's activities in North America and Israel, exploring deal- flow, creating strategic opportunities, and working with founders to solve daily challenges and evaluate strategic decisions.
Dan is passionate about food, startups, and sustainability and prior to joining Unovis his endeavors included launching a snack company, heading a logistics firm, opening a restaurant, and managing a creative agency. He received his BA from Mexico’s Universidad Iberoamericana and an MBA from Babson College. In addition to his other work, Dan serves as a mentor at 500 Startups and is a board member of Zero Egg, Alpha Foods, Nova Meat, and Black Sheep Foods.
Matt Crisp
Sofia Elizondo
Maija Itkonen
Maija Itkonen is a designer, innovator, serial entrepreneur and one of the movers and shakers at the alternative protein field.
Currently she’s acting as CEO and Co-founder of Onego Bio, a company producing animal-free egg white with cellular agriculture means.
Her previous company Gold&Green is focused on plant proteins, specifically oat based meat alternatives.
Maija is a musician as her second profession, and if not found at the innovation lab or by the saxophone, she’s probably taking care of cucumbers with her kids.
Melissa Snover
Melissa Snover is an award-winning entrepreneur and visionary in the world of food technology and additive manufacturing. She is passionate about developing innovations which offer solutions to her customers, challenge her competitors, and disrupt current market offerings. She is currently the founder and CEO of Rem3dy Health which pioneers personalised solutions across preventative and curative health under the brands Nourished (Personalised Nutrition) and Scripted (Personalised Medicine).
Jeremy Burks
Professor Yaakov Nahmias
Chuck Templeton
Shelley Balanko
Olaf Larsen
Talk to me about… your research
I studied chemistry at the VU University Amsterdam, where I progressed to obtain a PhD in biophysics from the same university.
Following my postdoctoral research in New York City and Amsterdam, I began my career within the industry. I worked for both ASML, and TNO, and as a life sciences consultant within various organizations.
Since 2012, I've headed the science department at Yakult Nederland, and since 2016, I have been a part time assistant professor at the VU University.
My research focuses on the valorization of microbiota management as well as mathematical simulations of the gut microbiota.
Nicholas Dyner
Len Monheit
A recognized industry analyst and thought leader, Len Monheit has over 20 years experience in the natural products and dietary supplement industry, with over 15 years background in digital media. Monheit has participated in dozens of speaking engagements across four continents, talking about best business practices, industry trends across the health and wellness industries, and success factors for international business development.
With a background in Biopharma and biotechnology, and as General Manager of a contract research and analytical lab, Monheit, in 1999, co-founded NPIcenter, which grew over the subsequent 8 years, to be the largest online media enterprise in the North American Natural Products industry. Selling that to Penton Media’s New Hope Natural Media in 2006, Monheit joined Penton/New Hope as digital media director, ingredient portfolio manager, market leader and ultimately Executive Director of Strategic Business Development.
Taking on the role of General Manager, US, with UK-based William Reed Business Media, Monheit, over three years, introduced two new annual conferences to the US (Food Vision and Probiota) and was responsible for a tradeshow launch (The Healthy & Natural Show) in Chicago in May of 2016. Monheit had responsibility for all of William Reed’s activities in the Americas, including FoodNavigator-USA, NutraIngredients-USA, as well as Pharma and Cosmetics publications, in addition to international partnerships and growth projects.
Ali Mostashari
Ali Mostashari, Ph.D. (MIT) is a co-founder of LifeNome (https://www.lifenome.com), a Precision (biology-personalized) Nutrition and Health AI company headquartered in New York City. He is in the top 20 cited scholars in the world in complexity science. Concurrently he serves as a Member of the Global Futures Council of the World Economic Forum. LifeNome leverages biological, physiological, and behavioral data to hyper-personalize needs assessments and health and wellness interventions in the preventative health, nutrition, fitness, insurance and personal care/beauty industries.
Noosheen Hashemi
Noosheen Hashemi is a tech veteran, entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. She is the founder and CEO of January AI, a precision health tech company that harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to predict, prevent, postpone and manage chronic disease. In June 2021 the World Economic Forum honored January AI as a Technology Pioneer. Noosheen also guides a family office that includes diverse investments in over 100 companies and venture capital funds. She is the founder of the HAND Foundation, focused on supporting scholars and organizations that promote discourse and socioeconomic growth among the disenfranchised. She lives in Silicon Valley.
Thomas Aarts
Thomas Aarts is Managing Director of Nutrition Business Advisors (NBA), a company which provides advanced consulting, strategic advising, capital raising, and full-service business development focused on the Global Nutrition Industry. Mr. Aarts sits on several boards, including Vitamin Angels, a non-profit whose mission is to provide vital nutrients to children and women in need. Tom is a graduate of Colgate University and completed his MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Aarts is a high-level management consultant with 22 years of experience working with C-suite executives across the nutrition industry. His experience lies in management consulting, M&A transactions, capital raising and strategic market research. Mr. Aarts co-founded the Nutrition Business Journal (NBJ) in 1996, the business journal of record for the nutrition industry. Through this, he was an integral part of creating many industry-leading reports that helped shape the nutrition industry. Mr. Aarts now serves as Chairman of the Editorial Advisory Board for NBJ. He is also the Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the annual NBJ Summit, a premier CEO/executive retreat for the nutrition and natural products industry, now in its twenty-first year.
Leonardo Aquino
Leo Aquino is the Head of R&D for Unilever Foods & Refreshment in North America. He is focused on making sustainable living commonplace and transforming the Food system at scale through technology and boldly healthier innovations behind big brands. He brought to market post-consumer recycled bottles and jars for Hellmann's® and Talenti ® as well as plant-based innovations across Hellmann’s®, Ben & Jerry’s® and Breyers®.
Ravi Jhala
Ravi Jhala serves as the Global Head of Commercial at Perfect Day, a consumer biology company on a mission to create a kinder, greener tomorrow by developing new ways to make the foods you love today — starting in the dairy aisle. In his role, he is responsible for leading the commercial team in bringing and fostering sustainable business partnerships with companies big and small who are using our protein as a tool to reach their sustainability targets, greening the supply chain together.
Ravi is passionate about food innovation, with nearly two decades of experience managing product development, R&D, and commercialization functions. His expertise touches every element of the food industry, including product and process development projects for global leaders in retail, food service, and food ingredients. His ability to work seamlessly with supply and demand chain functions has allowed his teams to move quickly and efficiently towards significant breakthroughs.
Ravi joined Perfect Day as the Head of Food Development, before being promoted to lead the Commercial team. He joined from Schreiber Dynamix Dairies, where he served as the Head of R&D and Product Development, responsible for new product development and innovations. Prior to that, he held R&D roles at Chobani, Wells’ Enterprises and Sargento Foods, and was a key driver of the most significant discoveries and products at these food leaders.
Ravi earned his MS in Food and Biomaterials Processing from South Dakota State University and his Bachelor’s in Dairy Technology from Anand Agricultural University. He is passionate about the future of animal-free food and Perfect Day’s vision of building a more equitable, resilient, and diverse food system for all of us.
Sean Hsu
Jim Mellon
Jim Mellon is a British entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist with a wide range of interests. Through his private investment company, Burnbrae Group, he has substantial real estate holdings in Germany and the Isle of Man, as well as holdings in private and public companies.
Jim’s investment philosophy is underpinned by careful analysis of new industries or major shifts in markets. This includes the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, as foreseen in the first book Jim co-authored entitled Wake Up!, and subsequently in the book Juvenescence which marked the beginning of a rush of capital into the nascent field of ageing research and also led to the formation of the company Juvenescence with his partners. Juvenescence is a leading biopharma company in the commercialisation of therapies to slow, stop and reverse aging.
More recently Jim authored the book Moo’s Law, focusing on investment opportunities in the field of cellular agriculture - the production of proteins and materials directly from cells. Jim co-founded Agronomics to invest in a portfolio of leading companies in cellular agriculture and is its largest investor.
Jim sits on the Board of Trustees of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, and of the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR). He is also a trustee of Biogerontology Research Foundation and is an Honorary Fellow of Oriel College at the University of Oxford, where he has established the Mellon Centre for Longevity, and Jim also sits on the Advisory Board of the Milken Institute’s Centre for the Future of Aging.
Jim Lalrd
CEO and co-founder of ENOUGH, a food-tech company whose purpose is “to make protein sustainable”. ENOUGH address this by growing mycoprotein, an advantaged food ingredient, more sustainably and at lower cost than all other protein options.
ENOUGH are building the World’s largest new protein facility. Located in the Netherlands, this will initially produce the equivalent of 5 cows worth of protein every hour, with plans to make a cow equivalent every 2 minutes by the end of the decade.
Demand for non-animal protein is forecast to grow by +15k tonnes every day for the next 5000 days. ENOUGH’s current plans are not enough to meet a relevant share of this but with collaboration, we embrace the opportunity to go further.
Noah Voreades
Noah is Managing Director of GenBiome Consulting. GenBiome Consulting specializes in the intersection between VMS, digital health, personalization, genetic testing and microbiome (testing, probiotics, prebiotics) across clinical + lifestyle + wellness. Recently, Noah served as Head of External Innovation for Seed Health, the leading microbial sciences consumer health company. Noah’s understanding of the microbiome and personalized health sectors stems from engagements ranging from supporting launch of Nutrisystem’s genetic testing platform DNA Body Blueprint to R&D development with OLIPOP, the leader in functional soda. Additionally, GenBiome has supported digital health companies such as Docbot & Perigon Health 360.
Noah’s insights have been featured in podcasts, Profile by Sanford Health Hacking Health Summit, New Hope’s NBJ Personalized Nutrition Report, SupplySide webinars and company sponsored thought leadership summits.
Noah’s graduate school research focused on the intersection of nutrition, microbiome & metabolomics for biomarker and novel assay development.
Vincent Kitirattragarn
Vincent Kitirattragarn is the founder and CEO of Dang Foods, the largest healthy Asian snack company. Dang’s coconut chips, rice chips, and nutrition bars are found in over 10,000 grocery stores and have earned many industry awards including the coveted SOFI “best snack” award multiple times.
A Cornell Graduate, Vincent is a Forbes 30 Under 30 awardee, and Gold List A100 awardee. His journey was featured on NPR’s “How I Built This” podcast in 2022.
Vincent and has been an active member of the Asian-American community for decades, organizing an annual Thai-American youth camp, supporting local organizations advancing justice for underrepresented ethnic communities, and supporting Bay Area food banks.
In the natural food industry, Vincent advocates for Asian issues like the recognition of lunar new year and AAPI heritage month. He is also a board member to JEDI Collective, an industry group promoting justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Michelle Wolf
Michelle Wolf co-founded New Wave Foods shortly after graduating from Carnegie Mellon with a master’s degree in biomedical engineering. She is a talented engineer with consumer packaged goods experience, who lead the initial development of New Wave Shrimp as a product "from the sea for the sea." In 2021 she was recognized by Forbes as one of the "30 under 30 Food & Drink" based on her accomplishments co-founding a company that promotes sustainable eating. Her goal is to build a portfolio of sustainable plant-based seafood products embraced by both the operator and the consumer.
Gregory McParland
Tyler Mayoras
Ari Tulla
Ari Tulla is a San Francisco-based entrepreneur and the co-founder & CEO of the smart nutrition service, Elo, whose mission is to transform food from the leading cause of disease to medicine. Ari is also an active angel investor and advisor with a portfolio of 40 startups, including Virta Health, Good Eggs, and Ōura.
Previously, Ari was the CEO of Quest Analytics, the market leader in doctor data and network management. Ari led the company through a pivotal growth stage from $15M to $40M in revenue. Before joining Quest Analytics, Ari was co-founder and CEO of BetterDoctor, a doctor search engine.
BetterDoctor raised $30M from first-tier investors, including NEA and Uncork Capital. In June 2018, BetterDoctor was acquired by private equity firm Vestar Capital. Before BetterDoctor, Ari led Nokia’s game and application studios.
When not working or co-parenting his two young children with his wife, Ari spends his time on the steep cliffs, powdery slopes, and big cold waves that only Northern California can offer.
Elysabeth Alfano
Elysabeth Alfano is the CEO of VegTech™ Invest, the advisor to the VegTech™ Plant-based Innovation & Climate ETF. The VegTech™ ETF has created a completely new impact asset class: plant-based innovation and alternative in the capital markets. The company has also launched the industry benchmark index, VegTech™ Plant-based Innovation & Alternative Proteins Index.
Elysabeth is a plant-based industry expert and speaks globally on the intersection of sustainability and our global food supply system, including recently at the U.N. Global Leaders Compact Summit.
She is the CEO of Plant Powered Consulting and hosts the Plantbased Business Hour, which features the CEOs and thought leaders in the industry. The Plantbased Business Hour is considered, “The Gold Standard” for those who want to understand, participate in, and capitalize on this secular trend. Linkedin here.
Professor Robert Lustig
Greg Hocking
Doug Munk
2023 Partners
Founding Partners
Botrista Technology
Website: https://www.botrista.co/
A 2022 Kitchen Innovation Award winner, Botrista provides beverage solutions to foodservice operators by leveraging easy-to-use equipment (the DrinkBot) alongside a line of pre-packaged ingredients to deliver a variety of craft beverages, including infused teas & lattes, flavored lemonades, iced coffees and more! Operators can now offer high margin items without the complexity or investment in a full bar. Our system takes up just 5-sq ft and enables customizable drink recipes at the touch of a button. We automate the portioning, dispensing and mixing process to deliver a fresh and consistently blended product in under 20 seconds.
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