Michele is the Chief Executive of FoodNI, a membership organisation dedicated to enhancing the reputation of Northern Ireland’s food and drink, representing over 450 member companies (including 200 Taste of Ulster Restaurants) and acting as a strategic driver to support the industry to achieve greatness. Michele was central to delivery in 2016 of the first ever Year of Food and Drink, which increased positive visitor attitudes towards Northern Ireland food and drink by 23% and resulted in Northern Ireland winning the International Travel and Tourism Awards – Best Food Destination 2018-19. She is now spearheading the Our food, the Power of Good strategy to establish Northern Ireland as a leading food region in the UK by 2025.
Simon Kenton-Lake works for food justice NGO Nourish Scotland and leads on the Peas Please project in Scotland. He has an MSc in Environmental Resources and his professional background is in behaviour change, especially around responding to the climate and biodiversity emergencies, network support and effective partnership working. He is passionate about food, setting up various food projects in Oxfordshire before moving to Edinburgh in 2019. When not eating or cooking he likes to run up hills and sit in pubs.
Pete is a trustee of the Food Ethics Council and a member of the Scottish Food Commission. His favourite vegetable is celeriac.
He has three children, a moderately dysfunctional (4.3 on the RD Laing scale) family life, and a working sheepdog called Lucy who still hasn’t quite been forgiven for not being Lily who died a year ago. He has pretty much no hobbies as when he’s not doing his day job he is chasing pigs round a muddy field and wondering how to both pay the wages and get the tractor fixed at his almost but not quite viable organic farming business. But if he ever did get a job interview he would say how much he likes reading, hillwalking, cooking and cycling.
Katie is an independent director and adviser. She has spent most of her career in Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) and corporate marketing. She was Head of SRI at Cazenove Capital Management for 12 years, where she initiated and led the SRI offering. This was followed by 5 years as Director of Responsible Investment and Stewardship at CCLA. Katie spent 5 years in strategic brand management and was a founding director of Swordfish Integrated Marketing. Previous Board positions include 7 years as trustee of Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, and Board Director of UK Sustainable Investment Forum (UKSIF). Katie is currently a Non Executive Director (NED) of Thrive Renewables, including being a member of both the Nominations and Remuneration Committees; she is an independent member of the Access Endowment Investment Committee; is a member of the Advisory Board of LEAP – Livestock, Environment and People; and on the Expert Advisory Group for Snowball IM.
Tim Lobstein is Senior Policy Advisor to the World Obesity Federation based in London, UK, and is an Honorary Professor at the Boden Obesity Collaboration, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia. He was previously a Visiting Fellow at the Rudd Food Policy Center, Yale University, and a Research Fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, and for many years was a director of the UK Food Commission and editor of its journal, The Food Magazine.
Tim has been the lead author of papers on children’s health in several journals including Obesity Reviews and Lancet and a member of the Lancet Commission on Obesity, contributing to its report on The Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition and Climate Change. Tim has written several chapters for standard textbooks on obesity in childhood and obesity prevention, and has undertaken consultancies for the European Commission, the World Health Organization and UNICEF.
Rachel Loopstra is a Lecturer in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at King’s College London. She is a quantitative researcher, and her research explores the impact of social policies on nutrition, household food insecurity and health. Recent projects include a nationwide survey of people using food banks in The Trussell Trust Foodbank Network, conducted in collaboration with The Trussell Trust. She is currently working on an ESRC-funded project exploring the rise of food bank use and food insecurity over the period of economic recession and austerity in the UK. She completed her PhD in Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto.
Martin White is programme leader and professor of population health research in the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge, where he leads publicly-funded research on understanding and changing food systems to improve population health. He has particular interests in food environments that shape what we eat, as well as the causes and consequences of, and interventions to reduce, social inequalities in health. He acts as an adviser to governments, the World Health Organisation and a number of non-governmental organisations. Martin graduated in Medicine from Birmingham University, from which he also gained an MD, and has an MSc in public health from Newcastle University. He is a Fellow of the UK Faculty of Public Health, past President of the UK Society for Social Medicine, and the UK Society for Behavioural Medicine.