Leela is a senior research analyst in the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's New Plastics Economy initiative. She uses her technical background to assess emerging innovation opportunities within the plastic packaging sector, specifically focusing on the exciting innovation and business potential offered by upstream solutions. She holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Queensland.
Michel is a passionate Innovation Manager and creative problem solver. In his role, Michel is shaping the overall innovation agenda at DHL through developing industry trend reports and identifying, piloting and commercializing state-of-the art technology solutions for the logistics industry and its customers. Within the Trend Research team, Michel’s work focuses on future application areas of drone technologies within logistics operations and the introduction of upcoming packaging innovations to the business.
Michel joined Deutsche Post DHL Group in 2017 and worked for the global innovation team at the Innovation Centers in Germany and Singapore. Michel studied in France and Germany and holds a Master’s degree with a focus on Technology & Innovation Management.
Herwin holds a Master in Business Administration as well as Technology & Innovation Management. He has over 15 years of experience in the packaging industry across different management roles in the sales and business development areas. He has a large breadth of knowledge and experience of working with and being responsible for some of the world's largest FMCG customers. During recent years, Herwin has been part of, and managed a multi-discipline innovation team (from development to implementation) with a clear focus and track record in ecommerce, supply chain and logistics. Sustainability is one of his passions, both from a business perspective and personally, being a father of three he wants to leave them a better planet. His current responsibilities include growing and building the ecommerce category for Smurfit Kappa and its customers.
David has been fascinated by marketing since his childhood. The first 10 years of his working life, he spend in management consulting, focusing on fixing strategic and growth challenges for CPG companies in US and Europe.
In 2005 he joined Perfetti Van Melle and took care of various candy brands in Benelux, focusing on innovation and impactful communications. Besides strong brand growth, the work was recognized with a Golden Effie and a British Design Effectiveness award. From 2010 to 2015 he was responsible for Marketing and Trade Marketing teams in Perfetti Van Melle Vietnam – achieving 5 years of consecutive double-digit growth for the brands in this emerging South East Asian country.
Since 2015 he is Perfetti’s Global Ecommerce Lead, supporting operating companies around the globe to quickly develop e-commerce skills and achieve above fair share in this emerging new eco-system.
Richard leads the regional design team within Mars Wrigley Confectionary, shaping the design and innovation agenda to ensure that the innovation pipeline is fuelled with customer-centric solutions that meet our global brands’ strategies and individual market requirements, across our portfolio of chocolate, gum and fruity confections.
Siti is working as a Product Manager at Ace & Tate; an Amsterdam-based eyewear company with over 50 stores across Europe, where she started working 6 years ago. As a Product Manager, she is currently part of the Product Design team working alongside the designers. In addition to supervising and enabling the development process of every eyewear collection, she is responsible for developing sustainable solutions to packaging & additional products.
Philip Wirsen is a Global Strategy & Channel Leader at Tetra Pak. He helps food & beverage manufacturers and retailers identify opportunities to differentiate, optimize their supply chain and improve their sustainability by producing data-driven analysis and cost benchmarking. He also leads the global Ecommerce & Foodservice strategy.
Before his time at Tetra Pak, Philip spent three years at the Copenhagen Business School and has a degree in International Business & Politics.
Natasha is leading strategic marketing for Amcor Flexibles based in Amcor’s headquarters in Zurich. She joined Amcor in 2014 and since then held multiple roles in marketing, innovation and product management. Natasha’s expertise covers the full range of flexible packaging solutions and their end-use markets. She is passionate about translating market trends into business opportunities and mobilizing organizations to pursue them. Currently, among other projects, Natasha is leading e-commerce initiative for Amcor Flexibles EMEA. Prior to Amcor Natasha held various marketing and commercial roles at industrial companies as well as worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company specializing in marketing and sales. Natasha holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.
With over ten years of experience in the adhesives industry, Elizabeth Staab leads strategic marketing for the Packaging and Beverage markets globally. She has a strong passion for sustainable solutions that offer true customer benefits.
Olivier is CEO of Suez trading as well as the Industrial Market Director for the Pulp & Paper industry. Suez is a worldwide leader in water and waste resources management. We are providing our customers - industry, local authorities and consumers - partners and stakeholders, all over the world, with operational solutions to address new resource management challenges. From a master of Business Administration and Management at NEOMA Business School through being Managing Director in different firms, Olivier has developed a strong operational and technical background.
Olivier lead an experienced team with strong business focus skills that work in supplying secondary raw materials with high standard of professionalism. In a complex industry, where regulations are becoming more and more stringent, we focus on providing quality commodities that are used to fuel the customer processes and/or, more and more, to generate energy. With a strong European historical base with expanding international activities in providing secondary raw materials and fuels, Olivier and his team are supporting profitable growth.”
Karl is working with innovation in the division Packaging Solutions at Stora Enso. Karl’s passion for sustainability and innovation comes in handy when working with both local and global customers in facilitating innovation workshops, business development projects and other customer cases of reducing or eliminating plastic waste. A M.Sc in Chemistry and experiences from many pulp & paper mills helps in the technical discussions. The world needs o become more circular in resource usage and Stora Enso wants to be part of the solution, everything that is made from fossil today can be made from a tree tomorrow!
Thierry holds a master in trade engineering and he is a passionate customer and innovation oriented sales manager. Thierry led for years sales teams in Belgium and France in the packaging industry. His expertise later supported the development of new innovative products in slow-moving markets, to strengthen the added value of Mondi‘s offering. His problem solving mind-set combined with a passion for sustainable packaging are now dedicated to develop the markets for sack-kraft paper based solutions for the growing e-commerce business.
Ilkka Harju, Packaging Design Director, is leading the Metsä Board’s packaging design team responsible for the European and Asian markets. Before joining Metsä Board in 2018, he was responsible for packaging design and innovation needs for various companies.
Harju is renowned for pushing design boundaries by working collaboratively with other designers and technology experts. He constantly advocates the role of responsible design, technology and renewable raw materials as a tool for a healthier environment. In 2017 Harju received a Worldstar Award for his jewelry packaging design.
After 25 years of experience in the packaging industry, Manuel Fernandez joined STOROPACK in February 2018 as “Marketing Manager Air Products” first then as “Packaging Systems Integration (PSI). Currently he occupies the position of "Promotion Manager EU (Core Products and PSI)" for the support of sales units.
His career has allowed him to acquire great expertise to meet the needs of customers in terms of choice of protective packaging materials, reorganization and optimization of packaging areas, productivity and work process. This experience has been acquired through countless visits to companies in all sectors of activity.
Manuel previously worked 8 years at SEALEAD AIR as "Account and Trainer Executive" supervising several distributors. Then 14 years at EASYPACK / PREGIS as sales manager in France. Period during which he contributed to the development and significant growth of the structure and the recognition of the brand.
Miguel brings CPG, Retail, E-commerce, Category Management experience, where he has seen the effects that packaging can have for retailers, and consumers to make decisions and the importance for brand building. As technology evolves, and more transactions happen online, packaging plays a bigger role of a customer touch-point.
Based in London, Miguel leads Google’s B2B vertical marketing efforts across the region. Miguel joined Google Poland in 2015; since then, he has focused on helping EMEA in-country teams to work on programs that enable our advertisers to become successful in their business with Google’s capabilities - Focusing on e-commerce, App Developers, and Exporters, inc development and launch of successful global platforms (e.g. Market Finder or Grow My Store). In Google’s mission to help businesses grow.
Prior to Google, Miguel was part of the Global Strategy Group at Samsung Electronics in South Korea, advising c-level exec on go-to-market strategies for mobile devices. Before, he spent 6 years in sales/biz development at Procter & Gamble in Latin America, and 1 year as an entrepreneur.
Miguel was recently recognized for his achievements with the global award: P&G Alumni Visionaries Under 40.
He holds an MBA degree from the University of Michigan, and a BBA from ITESM Mexico.
25 years in the job, worked for various Brands, mostly billion $ Brands (Wick, Blend-a-dent, Crest, Oral b, Wella) in P&G in global Packaging R&D roles, since a merger for COTY. Coty is a world leader consumer goods company in Beauty care with Brands like Hugo Boss, Chloe, Bruno Banani, Addidas, WELLA, OPI etc).
Our R&D work is focused on Consumer delight, First & Second Moment of Truth with maximum value creation for consumers around the world.
Frits van den Bos (1963) is Manager Innovation at GS1 Netherlands. For almost 30 year he is helping retailers and manufacturers to align their business processes in order to collaboratively create better value at lower costs for their consumers. Over the last 10 years his focus has been on the impact that online retail, sustainability and circularity bring to this collaborations. The link between products and the associated data proves to be a key enabler in this context.
Marlena Hardy is e – Commerce Packaging Business Development Manager & Regional Category Manger at DS Smith.
She joined the business in 2018 and focuses on development of e-Commerce products and business (DS Smith e-Commerce Toolbox) in Europe. She is also working with a network of DS Smith e-Commerce sales specialists in Europe and plays an active role in building the e-Commerce category.
Marlena's experience includes retail and FMCG. She held several Global and Regional packaging and project management roles with Unilever as well as packaging development role at Asda Walmart. This unique combination of in-depth understanding of the operational, technical, environmental and economic aspects of packaging development in different environments gives her a highly developed insight into the specificity of e-Commerce and its key challenges.
Kate Bezar is the co-founder of The Better Packaging Co., a New Zealand-based company which has become, in just two years of operation, the world’s largest supplier of home compostable packaging for eCommerce. As a result they have revolutionised the market with their innovative, sustainable packaging solutions founded on Circular Economy principles and the premise that ‘waste is a design flaw’.
