Darshana Joshi Email & Phone Number

East Africa

As the Program Manager for the project, responsible for driving strategic enhancements in nutrition across Rwanda's school feeding programmes, scaling up fortified wholegrain flour production, and advancing local millers' operations through targeted support. The role also entailed broadening the network of stakeholders to include key public and private entities, fostering a collaborative framework for sustainable health and nutrition improvements.

Rwanda

As the Rwanda Director and Strategic Project Lead for the Food Systems for the Future Institute, tasked with leading sustainable protein production projects and establishing market-driven food and agricultural solutions. Duties included steering stakeholder engagement and fostering partnerships for the innovative Black Soldier Fly protein production, ensuring strategic alignment across project phases, and managing key relationships with governmental bodies. Additionally, accountable for guiding research and development of new protein products and biofertilizers, and playing a key role in shaping research and regulatory frameworks to support the use of insect-based protein in animal feeds.

Rwanda

East Africa

As the former Commercial Director for East Africa at Africa Improved Foods, served a key role in developing and executing commercial strategies for a joint venture that produces high-quality, nutritious foods for East Africa’s vulnerable populations. Responsibilities included directing new product development, guiding market entry, and crafting marketing strategies. Led strategic project management and the coordination of cross-functional teams to launch successful products in multiple East African countries, ensuring alignment with the organization’s goals and fostering significant market growth.

London, United Kingdom

•Reporting into Director – Strategic Markets and responsible for designing, leading and implementing critical internal and external commercial strategy and business development initiatives worth over €300 million.•Developed and currently implementing the 3 year business strategy for entry into Strategic Markets in EMEA through alliances with global as well as local commercial channels.•As the account manager for the biggest single customer in the group, managed various operational, resource and process challenges to deliver the organic sales target of €150 million RSV .•Created target business model and market entry strategy (€200m+ market value) for a cross cluster customer development by aligning with key stakeholders (Commercial & Marketing Director, MD of Country Clusters, CCOs of Country Clusters) to deliver the pan European opportunities.•Managed the cross functional Europe wide team (12+ people) to implement central processes on key initiatives like new product development, customisation and negotiating new contracts including central listing for pan European customers.•Responsible for tracking and communicating the status of key strategy initiatives to both internal cross functional stakeholders across Europe and the executive team.

Lausanne Area, Switzerland

IMD is a top-ranked business school in the world and is known as an expert in developing global leaders through high-impact executive education.- Worked on numerous consulting projects, including large, mid-size, and start- up companies in Switzerland and abroad as part of the program-The projects were around Go-to-market strategy, Developing business plans, marketing and change management project, among others.-Was the speaker at two international conferences, presenting comprehensive analysis of countries and markets to a group of peers and alumni

Mena Region

•Responsible for $250m product portfolio and $10m marketing budget for core food brands in North and East Africa.•Developed brand strategy and launched a new communication campaign increasing sales by 130% and profitability by 20%•Led a cross-functional team of 12 people to review and increase factory production capacity leading to 80% volume increase and 15% manufacturing profit increase•Managed a multicultural team to develop and launch a customised brand campaign leading to sales of $40m in the first year •Set-up an in-house consumer research team of 15 members to gain customer insights and to deliver rapid information turnaround, reducing the product-launch cycle by an average of 4 months

Mumbai Area, India

•Planned and implemented the marketing campaigns for all new motion picture releases, PS3 gaming software and home video releases•Managed the movie catalogue and developed customized bundling campaigns, generating $0.5m from non-core business •Re-launched Columbia catalogue via new box sets and seasonal campaigns increasing revenue contribution of releases from 25% to 40%•Planned the annual release calendar, developed packaging and customised trade promotions increasing key- account sales by 15% •Launched SONY CLUB by establishing a network of 2.3k DVD rental libraries for direct consumer engagement and targeted marketing, leading to 10% incremental sales

Master Of Business Administration (Mba)

Mba, Marketing,

Bachelor of Science, Microbiology

Master’S Of Business Administration (Mms), Marketing

Bachelor Of Science, Microbiology