Speakers Invest Aqua 2019

Jennifer Bushman is a sustainable aquaculture advocate, strategist and champion! For nearly a decade, Jennifer has worked with sustainable aquaculture brands such as Verlasso Salmon, Pacifico Aquaculture, Riverence Trout, Rainforest Tilapia and Blue Ocean Mariculture. Additionally, she has worked to create deeper relationships between the sustainable aquaculture community and NGO’s such as Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch as well as Global Aquaculture Alliance and ASC. In 2019, she was responsible for bringing the first ever sanctioned panel focusing exclusively on aquaculture to the stage at South by Southwest moderated by Andrew Zimmern. The surrounding campaign reached nearly 56 million impressions. In 2018, working with film maker Eric Wolfinger, She executive produced the documentary short ”Full Circle, Journey of a Waterman”. The story of 10x Paddle Board and WSL Big Wave tour champion, Jamie Mitchell’s journey to understanding the vital impact of aquaculture. To date, the film has nearly 1.2. million downloads and over 40 million impressions from the supporting campaign. In 2014, she made over 75 television appearances reaching 189 markets and nearly 29 million viewers featuring the attributes of supporting fish reared right. She taught thousands through her culinary school, Nothing to It!, has written three cookbooks and has been recognized numerous times by the James Beard Foundation and the International Association of Culinary Professionals. Jennifer is a proud mom and wife that lives in San Francisco, California.

Jennifer Bushman

Principal

Dr. Kevin Fitzsimmons is a past President of the World Aquaculture Society and a Professor and Extension Specialist at the University of Arizona. His research and extension work since 1981 have focused on improving the sustainability of the aquaculture industry in the US and abroad. He has been a leader in the development of the tilapia farming industry on a worldwide basis. In 2017, he was awarded his second Fulbright Fellowship, a research grant working on commercialization of alternative ingredients for aquaculture feeds with three Universities in Southeast Asia. In addition to his Arizona faculty position he is currently acting as the Team Leader for a three-year EU sponsored project “Myanmar Sustainable Aquaculture Project” MYSAP. Kevin also serves on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Monterey Bay Aquarium – Seafood Watch program and its associated Southeast Asia Fisheries and Aquaculture Initiative. Dr. Fitzsimmons is also a co-founder and judge for the F3 Future of Fish Feeds Initiative and their associated F3 Challenges. These related efforts are all devoted to improving the commercial and environmental sustainability of farmed seafood and encouraging markets to support producers and their high-quality seafood products across the value chain.

Kevin Fitzsimmons

Professor and Director of International Programs

Wendy Norden directs the science team of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program, maintaining a rigorous scientific framework to evaluate the sustainability of wild fisheries and aquaculture operations. She managers the research process that develops recommendations that inform consumers and businesses throughout the United States on which seafood is a caught or farmed in environmentally responsible ways. She directs all aspects of the Science Program, including: strategic direction; external relationships and global capacity building with: producers, governments, seafood business and NGOs. This work has brought Wendy to over 20 countries over the past few years working to provide sustainable seafood information and creating collaboration and engagement on improving global seafood production practices. Wendy has over 20 years of experience in marine conservation, aquaculture and fisheries science. Prior to joining Seafood Watch, Wendy was a Marine Conservation Science Research Professor at the University of Maine, studying the impacts of eco-certification on fisheries management and economic incentives for conservation. Wendy also spent several years managing the New Zealand Department of Conservations’ fisheries observer program focused on identifying and managing country-wide bycatch research and reduction techniques. She began her career as a field biologist designing subtidal habitat and species restoration programs, working on aquaculture research farms and studying benthic impacts caused from fishing activities.

Wendy Norden

Seafood Watch Science Director

Peter has over 28 years’ experience gained in the fresh and frozen food and seafood sectors holding management roles across governmental agency, policy, manufacturing and supermarketing sectors. Peter has held senior commercial, technical and corporate responsibility roles with McDonald’s, Seafish UK, Sainsbury’s Supermarkets, Tesco Stores, Iglo Foods Group and Nomad Foods Europe.

Known as a champion of Sustainable Development, Peter has led many verification platforms to improve standards, supply chain resilience and natural capital whilst being the architect behind the design and implementation of international food brand integrated sustainability programs. Within the seafood sector, he was the originator behind the IFFO RS fishmeal and fish oil standard, the first industry sector member on the ASC Supervisory Board where he served six years and led the adoption by international food brands of the ASC, MSC, BAP and IFFO RS standards.

Peter has advised the UN FAO, OECD, EU Commission, European Governments and Foundations on supply chain sustainability and consumer strategy and served on expert panels worldwide. Peter leads a global food strategy consultancy, is a Non-Executive Industry Board member for the UK’s Seafish Authority and represents Regal Springs as a Supervisory Board Member on the Global Seafood Sustainability Initiative (GSSI).

Peter Hajipieris

Global Responsibility, Sustainability and External Affairs

is Director Markets and Verified Sourcing Areas at IDH – The Sustainable Trade Initiative. IDH convenes companies, governments and others in public-private partnerships to drive joint design, co-funding and prototyping of new economically viable approaches to green & inclusive growth at scale in commodity sectors.

Before his involvement with IDH, Willem was management and sustainability consultant, owner of Latour Commodities Advisory, a boutique consultancy and accelerator firm with a predominantly European and Asian client base.

For 5 years, before setting up Latour Commodities Advisory in 2011, Willem was with Standard Chartered Bank as Global Head of the bank’s Commodity Traders and Agribusiness in charge of the management and strategic direction of the bank’s relationships with commodity companies,

During his 30-year career, Willem has worked in the global commodity markets and finance centres Hong Kong, Singapore, London, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt and Amsterdam. He spent more than 18 years working in Asia.

Willem Klaassens

Director Markets and SourceUp

+31 (0) 6 3815 5160

As a fish farmer-turned-agriculture tech entrepreneur, eFishery founder and CEO Gibran Huzaifah is revolutionizing the relatively untapped $9.4 billion-valued Indonesian aquaculture market. eFishery uses cloud-based smart-feeding technology in fish and shrimp farms across the vast archipelago, to ensure the fish are healthy and waste minimized – to increase feed efficiency by 21%. The IoT startup doesn’t just sell products, it also collects data from feeding, production, water quality and fish behavior, to create predictive insights for farmers. The company uses the data platform to provide and connect farmers with services like financing, market access, and supply.

He was part of Google Launchpad Accelerator in 2015 and Unreasonable Impact in 2018. He was listed as Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2017 and Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (Innovation category) 2018.

Gibran El Farizy

CEO

Rob Kiers is the Managing Director of Skretting Asia and Nutreco Africa. He has a background in hotel management and international business. He has been in Nutreco for 12 years in different roles in different parts of the world (Eastern Europe, Latam, Middle East). Rob is responsible from the start for the development of the strategy and business in Africa for Nutreco (since 2013); and is since October 2017 responsible for Africa & Asia for Skretting and Africa for Trouw Nutrition. He works with nine companies in Egypt, Zambia, South Africa, Africa Export, Nigeria, India, Vietnam, China and Japan.

Rob Kiers

Managing Director Skretting Asia and Nutreco Africa

Joost is an Investment Director at Nutreco NuFrontiers, the strategic innovation and investment department of Nutreco. The aim of NuFrontiers is to accelerate technological change to enable ‘Feeding the Future’ and to identify, develop and invest in next generation sustainable products, models and services throughout the feed and food protein value chain. NuFrontiers invests in start-ups and scale-ups as well as partnerships and joint-ventures with innovative companies. Themes in scope are animal nutrition, animal health, digital farming solutions, and sustainable farming systems (all across both livestock farming and aquaculture) as well as alternative proteins for food. Joost was raised on a dairy farm in The Netherlands and holds degrees in Animal Sciences and Business Administration. Prior to working for Nutreco he worked for The Boston Consulting Group.

Joost Matthijssen

Investment Director Nutreco NuFrontiers

Joost Oorthuizen is since the foundation of IDH the Executive Director. Previously he worked as a management consultant in the Netherlands and abroad. Joost holds a Ph.D. on Natural Resource Management from Wageningen University, and a post-graduate Master of Change Management degree (MCM). He sits in several boards of international sustainability initiatives as well as Investment Funds.

Joost Oorthuizen

Former CEO of IDH (2008-2020)

Daniel Skaven Ruben is an advisor to the Rockefeller Foundation Food Team since mid-2017. His key focus has been to identify and assess innovative technologies that can help advance a more nourishing and environmentally sustainable food system. Prior to this role, Daniel worked for the World Bank in Washington D.C. on promoting entrepreneurship, as well as for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark (in New York and Stockholm), assisting Danish tech companies to internationalize. He is a mentor to startups of accelerators Katapult Ocean (Oslo) and Big Idea Ventures (New York), and an advisor to a number of AgTech and FoodTech companies.

Daniel holds a BSc in International Business (Copenhagen Business School), an LLM in Public International Law (Stockholm University), and a MSc in Foreign Service (Georgetown University).

Daniel Skaven Ruben

Advisor

General Counsel and Director of Operations at Aqua-Spark, a global fund in sustainable aquaculture, Elizabeth Pederson is a lifelong human rights advocate.  She has worked prosecuting human rights abuses in the United States and at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, founded the nonprofit Ms. JD to advance women in law, and is currently focused on building Aqua-Spark’s Africa Fund.  Elizabeth holds a Juris Doctor degree from Stanford Law School, where she was a Public Interest Fellow; a M.P.A. from the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan; and a B.A. from Brandeis University.

Elizabeth Pederson

General Counsel and Director of Operations

Co-founder and Managing Partner of Aqua-Spark, a pioneer investment fund for sustainable aquaculture. Aqua-Spark is a global investment fund with a mission to transform the global aquaculture industry into one that is healthier, more sustainable and more accessible. They invest in aquaculture companies across the value chain, from farming operations to alternative feed ingredients, disease battling, technology, all the way to consumer facing aquaculture products. These companies are solving some of the industry’s big challenges while bringing returns that are comparable to today’s traditional industry. The portfolio works as an ecosystem, with the companies agreeing to collaborate on optimal solutions, and working together toward this shared vision of a more efficient global aquaculture industry.

Prior to Aqua-Spark Amy served as director of the TED Conference’s annual TED Prize for almost a decade, leading more than twenty global collaborations across a broad spectrum of sectors, including healthcare, education, science, technology, conservation, art, and activism. With TED, her list of notable projects include: Sylvia Earle’s Mission Blue, Jamie Oliver’s Food revolution, JR’s Inside Out Project, and Bono’s One.org among others. Amy met her partner/ co-founder through ocean conservation work connected to Sylvia Earle’s Mission Blue. With Aqua-Spark Amy serves on the boards of Love the Wild, eFishery, Xpert Sea and Energaia.

Amy Novogratz

Co-founder and Managing Partner

Flavio Corsin oversees the Aquaculture Program at IDH the Sustainable Trade Initiative. IDH drives the joint design of economically viable approaches to realize green and inclusive growth at scale in several agriculture and manufacturing commodity sectors and sourcing areas in Asia, Africa and Latin America.  Flavio spent more than two decades working in responsible aquaculture globally, working for several non-profit, intergovernmental and for-profit organizations. He also supported the establishment of several groundbreaking industry platforms in sectors such as coffee, tea, spices and apparel. Flavio holds a M.Sc. in aquaculture and a Ph.D. in epidemiology, the study of diseases in populations.

Ralf has been both Co-Founder, and held senior management positions in several software companies over the last 20 years. His primary responsibilities included building up and growing the businesses that he was involved. He has background in macroeconomics and is an accredited physiotherapist in Norway.
In March 2015 Ralf joined FAI Farms limited /Benchmark Holding plc as Head of software development. During the last four years FAI /BMK have launched several data solutions including a health corporation portal for salmon in Norway, an antibiotic tracking software for retailer, a farm management software for layers, a welfare tracker and others.

Ralf Onken

Head of Software Development

Rajamanohar Somasundaram is the Co-Founder and CEO of Aquaconnect. Aquaconnect works with Indian Shrimp aquaculture farmers to improve their farm productivity and disease management through Deep learning/AI technologies intervention. Around 1 million rural farmers and coastal communities depend on shrimp & fish aquaculture, where the traditional farming practices prevents them in achieving production efficiency and diseases prediction. His team built FarmMOJO, an AI driven advisory solution that helps farmers improve productivity, predict disease and ultimately achieve higher farm income.World Economic Forum named Raj as a “Young Global Leader in 2012” in recognition of his leadership and contribution in the field of mobile technology innovation.  He was awarded ’40 UNDER 40 Ecosapien’ by The New Indian Express for the promotion of sustainable aquaculture practices in India. Raja holds a graduate degree from IIT Kanpur, India.

Rajamanohar Somasundaram

Co-Founder and CEO

Before co-founding Xpertsea, François was a Senior Associate at PwC, auditing and advising tech companies. François studied accounting at Laval University as well as Singapore Management University and completed his CPA certification. An enthusiastic entrepreneur, François is proud about building an organization that will impact future generations.

François Robitaille

Co-Founder and Head of Finance

Mariska Bottema is an environmental governance researcher at Wageningen University. Her research is focussed on aquaculture and marine governance in South-East Asia. Recent work has examined area-based models of aquaculture risk management in Thailand, Vietnam and China.

Mariska Bottema

Environmental Governance Researcher

Althaf Khan is the Director of Global Sourcing and a member of the Board of Directors of The Fishin’ Company, USA. He holds a master’s degree in Fish Processing Technology with extensive knowledge in fish processing and allied activities gained from his experience and exposure in fish processing industry around the globe.

Althaf is responsible for sourcing fully sustainable and traceable seafood from various countries much suited for USA retailers and food service. He has also taken lead roles in new projects for the company since the inception of The Fishin’ Company, USA. His extensive involvement in the seafood industry in various sections of fishing, processing, quality control, farming, sales and sourcing has helped many companies during the last 32 years of his career.

Althaf Khan

Director of Global Sourcing, member Board of Directors

Esther Luiten is Commercial Director at the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), a certification and labelling programme for responsibly farmed seafood. Focus is on engaging retailers and seafood brands into the programme and supporting producers and supply chain companies to become certified. The commercial team is also strengthening relationships with key stakeholders as NGOs, governments and researchers.

Before joining the ASC, Esther was programme manager at the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) and responsible for their Aquaculture market transformation program. Esther has over 15 years’ professional experience in the (international) seafood sector. She has a scientific background in Environmental Innovation and Communication, achieved her PhD in Innovation Studies and has been  since then very much interested in facilitating the global seafood supply chain towards more sustainable practices.

Esther Luiten

Commercial Director

Ezhil Subbian co-founded String after working for 15+ years on engineering and scale up of various biobased products. Her passion is in leveraging biology to address fundamental challenges such as food and environment. Ezhil was part of the early team at Gevo, a Caltech startup that commercialized biobutanol production. After Gevo, Ezhil worked first at Codexis Inc and then at Intrexon, helping both companies transition into the bioindustrial space. Ezhil brings to String first-hand knowledge of solutions that work as well as bottlenecks that plague biobased product development. Through String, Ezhil is working on enabling synthetic biology based solutions for Food and Ag sectors. Ezhil’s work was most recently recognized with the Women Transforming India Award 2018 from United Nations/NITI Aayog.

Ezhil Subbian

Founder/CEO

Herman Wisse is the Program Director of the Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative (GSSI). GSSI is a foundation under Dutch law with the mission of GSSI is to deliver a common, consistent and global benchmarking tool for seafood certification schemes to ensure confidence in the supply and promotion of sustainable seafood to consumers worldwide as well as promote improvement in the schemes.

Herman Wisse

Program Director

Jacqueline Claudia, CEO and Co-Founder of LoveTheWild, is a lifelong fish nerd who thought she was going to be a marine biologist when she grew up. Instead, after graduating from Wharton, she spent 15 years working in corporate strategy and innovation before finding her way back to the fish. She fell in love with the potential for sustainable aquaculture, and founded LoveTheWild to de-demonize great farmed fish, make it easier for people to cook great fish at home, and is passionately building a company that has a real shot at saving the world.

Jacqueline Claudia

CEO and Co-Founder

Roxanne Nanninga oversees the implementation and coordination of Thai Union’s SeaChange® sustainability strategy in North America in coordination with Chicken of the Sea. This comprehensive strategy tackles a wide range of sustainability objectives, including driving responsible aquaculture practices, reversing overfishing in global tuna fisheries, and ensuring safe and legal labor throughout Thai Union’s supply chains.  In 2018, Roxanne was one of the key architects in developing SeaChange® IGNITE, an innovative collaboration between Chicken of the Sea and Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Nanninga earned her Master’s in Environmental Management and International Development Policy Graduate Certificate from Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, concentrating in issues of development and trade in seafood supply chains. She has worked in multiple sectors, from startup to environmental non-profit and international corporations, to address the complex challenges facing sustainable seafood production and ocean conservation.

Roxanne Nanninga

Director of Sustainability

Legros specialises in fish breeding and fish farm management. He worked in aquaculture research centre of the University of Liège.  In 1992, he started the tilapia farm in Zimbabwe that became Lake Harvest.  He then took various assignments in aquaculture development in Africa and Latin America.

For 10 years, he headed the sales and marketing  office for Lake Harvest in Europe.  Since 2010, he has completed several contracts in aquaculture and fish marketing for EU programmes and private firms.  He is a highly respected aquaculturalist with an extensive global network in the industry.

Damien Legros

Managing Director