Group Director - Head of Quality & Food Safety, Merchandising and Systems.

Leading a diverse and engaged technical team of 50+ QA professionals responsible for the Quality, Safety and Food Safety of all product categories within the ALDI private label portfolio including food and non-food and the regulatory compliance of all warehouses and stores within the ALDI network.• Member of the ALDI Corporate Leadership Team, responsible for setting the short- and long-term Quality strategy for the US segment. Leader within the ALDI International QA Steering Committee responsible for setting the global QA strategic priorities.• Developed the optimal Quality organizational structure for the company and attracted talent to the Quality Management Team now formed by industry experts with deep technical knowledge of inherent food safety risks for grocery products (dry, canned, frozen and refrigerated foods).• Provided technical expertise in product and package development, food safety and quality for the commercialization of new private label products.• Developed and led the end-to-end governance framework to protect the ALDI brand by establishing proactive policies with the supply base and implementing verification steps within the product lifecycle.• Led incident management functioning as the company representative in all regulatory matters including collaboration with FDA, CDC and USDA-FSIS. Key member of the Crisis Response Team functioning as the technical advisor during the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Led a team of corporate and factory Quality and R&D professionals with responsibility over 6 manufacturing facilities in the US and Mexico. • Joined as part of the Merger & Acquisition team tasked with ensuring the flawless merger of SunriseGrowers under the SunOpta umbrella.• Established the global sourcing supplier quality assurance framework and developed the teamresponsible for ensuring that appropriate food safety, quality, and good agricultural practices were metby suppliers and that they were routinely verified; this included ensuring Organic and GFSI complianceof suppliers and growers.• Led the development of a center of excellence (COE) in fruit growing, harvesting methods, ripeningprocesses and manufacturing standards in collaboration with the University of California Davis.• Led a cross-functional team of field and grower experts, product developers and process engineers todevelop variety dependent processing settings to ensure yields >95% resulting in yearly savings of$1MM.• Standardized Quality and Food Safety best practices across all factories including EnvironmentalMonitoring programs, SQF and FSMA compliant Food Safety Plans, Food Defense Systems, ConsumerComplaint management programs amongst others.• Developed the IQ/OQ/PQ process for the implementation of a $18MM Capital project that includesfactory expansions and new asset acquisition. Oversaw all sanitary design reviews and acted as the keyFood Safety lead on this project.

Role reporting to the Operations SVP with cross functional interaction with Customer Experience, Marketing, Supply Chain, Retail and Engineering. Developed strategies and analyses to improve customer satisfaction, Developed more efficient fulfillment processes and provided insight-driven understanding of customer distribution, order profile and interactions with the site. Documented and institutionalized the use of controls, metrics, reporting and scorecards to ensure lasting project benefits and behavior change; leverage best practices across fulfillment centers.

Courses Taught:• Quality Management Systems• Facility Planning and Design

Lead a team of highly engaged associates to ensure the on-going production of safe and quality products that comply with FDA regulations. product design and meet or exceed customer and consumer expectations.  Active member of the leadership team with responsibilities over all Quality and R&D related activities for the site including microbiology, analytical lab services, sensory, technical support and new product, package and process scale-up.

Leading the use of statistics and Quality tools to ensure flawless execution of the product development and industrial scale-up processes of new product launches, renovations and productivity initiatives globally.

Provided expertise in quality, process control, food safety, sanitation and good manufacturing practices standards at Kellogg owned and contracted facilities for the implementation and launch of new products.