Wael Safi

Dana Hosseini

A serial entrepreneur who has managed and co-founded a number of genomics-based companies including, ProdermIQ, Iceland Genomics and DiThera. Mr. Hosseini's skills in international medical device/diagnostic sales and marketing were developed at Abbott Laboratories, Ortho Clinical Diagnostics (Johnson & Johnson) and Sequenom, where he held executive and management positions in business development, and sales and marketing functions. He has 25+ years of extensive experience working with global biotech, pharmaceutical companies and healthcare providers. He received both his B.Sc. and MBA from the University of British Columbia.

Allison Krebs Bensch

Allison Krebs-Bensch, a graduate of Vanderbilt University, has been intrinsically involved in her family’s pharmaceutical business, US Pharmaceutical Corporation, since graduating.  Rolling up her sleeves, Allison dove into learning every aspect of the business from Sales to R & D, before eventually taking over the responsibilities of CEO. 

Allison’s accomplishments include being listed as an inventor on patents for Improved Toleration of Iron Supplement Compositions.  Additionally, she has developed, progressive & pending, patented formulations utilizing new probiotic strains for various applications of use.  Most recently, she has co-founded and is CEO of a start-up probiotic skin care company, BeBe and Bella.  This company specializes in delivering probiotics and their fermented filtrates, both orally and topically, for improved natural beauty.   As co-founder, Allison has been invited to be  a Speaker at several symposiums related to the science behind probiotics.

Richard Andrews

Mr.  Andrews has spent most of his career as a C level executive leading operations, finance, and commercial and clinical development for biotechnology firms focused on new products that address inflammatory disease. Mr. Andrews has been instrumental in translating research and academic discoveries into product development and advanced clinical programs, building alliances and partnerships and organizing operational teams. Financing processes led by Mr. Andrews have secured over $130M in equity funding for new ventures. His work has been primarily focused on skin disease, pneumonia, infant hypoxic ischemia and kidney failure. Early in his career, Mr. Andrews led the commercialization of several natural cell systems to prevent disease on fruits and vegetables and launched several DNA diagnostic tests for periodontal disease. Mr. Andrews received graduate degrees in physical biochemistry (MS), and technology management (SM) from Purdue University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively. He also has an undergraduate degree in Chemistry (BS) from Hobart College.

Defne Saral

Currently Defne is the business leader for the commercial and technology offering of DuPont Industrial Biosciences (IB) to the personal care and cosmetics industry. She is part of the commercial industry leadership team, has responsibility for profit & loss and leads the global personal care team. She has 22 years of experience in global companies across a variety of industries.

Defne joined DuPont in 2005 after her MBA and has held commercial roles in marketing, sales, product management and business development. She has worked in specialty materials and ingredients for the fire fighting industry, textiles, paints & coatings, automotive, construction and retail. Prior to personal care, she was leading the food enzymes unit of IB developing offerings to improve freshness, optimize production, add texture, ensure quality consistency and reduce waste, water and energy consumption.

Prior to DuPont, she worked for 7 years at Philip Morris International, starting in Operations for Eastern Europe integrating acquisitions, moving to M&A, was Marlboro brand manager for Switzerland and head of strategic planning for the worldwide duty free unit.

Defne holds an MBA from IMD, Switzerland and a Bachelor in Systems Science Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, USA. She was born in the US, is of Turkish origin, and is a Swiss citizen.

David Tyrrell

David’s experience in skincare has spanned over 15 years. During his tenure at Kimberly-Clark he held positions in Corporate Research, New Product Development and Technology Scouting & Alliance Management. He has been active in identifying a variety of consumer and medical device technologies and products for in-licensing and led international research efforts in the biological characterization of naturally sourced skincare ingredients. David has a BS in Chemistry and a PhD in Biochemistry.

Ronie Schmelz

Julia French

Stephen Roman

Dr Phil Bolton

Phil obtained his Ph.D in organometallic chemistry from the University of Durham in 2000 and subsequently joined P&G where he worked on new technology development for the hair colourant category. Phil then joined RB in 2006 and has worked across a number of Innovation and Category R&D ROLES IN THE UK, Italy, Singapore and the US, becoming a director in 2010 and returning back to the UK based RB HQ in April 2015.

Phil currently leads the Outside Innovation team and has responsibility for delivering new and innovative solutions to the Health category pipelines. This can be anything from an ingredient in the product, through to products themselves, forging sustainable partnerships as well as being a strategic innovation partner for the senior category leadership within RB.

Raymond Ip

Kit Wallen-Russell

With a Masters Degree in Geophysics from University College London (UCL), twice published scientific author, and JooMo Co-Founder Kit published a peer-reviewed paper in 2017 that describes the first ever mechanism to determine whether skin is healthy or not. As director of the Pavane Research Centre (the R&D arm behind all ground-breaking JooMo technology), he discovered that the ONLY indicator of healthy skin was high microbial biodiversity, not the presence/lack of particular microbes. The immense power of his discovery meant that, for the first time, it was possible to determine whether everyday cosmetics really are the primary cause of the skin allergy epidemic that’s raging across the western world. To do so, Kit formed a partnership with top European institution, The Medical University of Graz, to test everyday cosmetics, including JooMo, for their effect on skin health. The extremely intriguing results from the seminal study will have been published by Kit at the time of the event. Both Kit and Nick aim to dispel the myths and ill-education surrounding Probiotics within the industry, and distance JooMo from the Pro-/Pre- Biotics label. JooMo is NOT a probiotic.

Richard LaDuca

Currently Rich is part of the technology leadership team within DuPont’s Industrial Biosciences (IB) Business.  He works within a portfolio management team and has direct responsibilities for resource allocation for projects within IB as well as with our cross pillar partner programs.  He has 34 years of experience in the development of bio-based products and new business initiatives.

Rich started his career in industrial biotechnology in 1984 as a research scientist when he joined Kodak’s Research Labs working with an interdisciplinary team to develop microbial cell factories to produce biochemicals.  He has worked on programs to produce lysine, threonine, biotin, tryptophan, indigo and ascorbic acid.  He was part of the Kodak team that helped form Genencor International where his efforts transitioned from research to business development.  He has had an active role in establishing partnering relationships in the biochemicals and biomaterials science areas with companies such as Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Eastman Chemical Co. (Ascorbic Acid) , Dow Corning (Silicon Biotechnology Platform) and The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (BioIsoprene).

Rich holds a Ph.D. in Microbial Cell Physiology from The University of Buffalo (Roswell Park Mem. Inst.) and completed a Post doctoral Fellowship Program in Biochemistry at the University of Rochester.

Céline Blanchard

After finalizing her study of biology, Céline received her M.Sc. in Cosmetic Natural Active Ingredients from ISIPCA in Versailles, France.

She held positions in New Product Development, Scientific Communication and Innovation Management at several raw materials’ suppliers and currently, Céline is part of the R&D department within BIOEUROPE as Cutaneous Biology Research Engineer.

Greg McParland