University of Surrey

Hitchin Girls School

Head of Industry Engagement  at Food Frontier

Coles Group

Head of Commercial Sustainability & Delivery

Led a team of 30+ product developers and product technologists across the Fresh Business units of Fresh Produce, Bakery and Meat, Deli, Seafood. 
Responsible for the delivery of innovation as well as ongoing quality and safety spanning a diverse product portfolio of $8bn in annual sales revenue. 
Through both external recruitment and internal coaching, development and promotion I built and developed the team to create three new BU Product & Technical managers enabling my role to move to focus on strategic projects and sustainability initiatives.

Head of Own Brand - Fresh

Led a team of 12 Product Developers and Product Technologists to manage the own brand innovation and ongoing safety and quality of the bakery, deli and seafood categories.

Own Brand Manager - Bakery, Deli, Seafood

Food Frontier is the independent think tank and expert advisor on alternative proteins in Australia and New Zealand. Funded entirely by donations, our work is proudly independent.

Through reports, conversations and events, Food Frontier provides data and insights on alternative proteins and their economic, environmental and public health benefits. We advise and connect businesses, innovators and policymakers – from start-ups to grocery giants, farming bodies to regulators – helping leaders navigate and pursue opportunities in the emerging plant-based meat and cultivated meat industries.

Food Frontier

Head of Industry Engagement 

I created The Food Brain, a smarter food technology consultancy, to work with and support the local food & drink industry to manage risks, solve problems and exploit opportunities.

During the pandemic, and in a new home on the other side of the world I secured contracts to support, coach and mentor a newly promoted factory technical manager, present at a national Food Safety and Integrity event, conduct microbiological risk analysis for manufacturing clients, and author a chapter in a textbook; Present Knowledge in Food Safety'.

The Food Brain

Food Tech Expert - Risk Management and Innovation 

I was responsible for creating and driving the Technical Innovation strategy for the Food group. I  established and ran food group wide projects and supported colleagues to deliver their local category area projects. 
My role involved working with our supplier partners to support and drive innovation in manufacturing from ingredients, to robotics, to new processing methods, and our retail operations teams to exploit opportunities in our stores.
I was also the food group lead for our link with our accelerator and incubator partner 'Founders Factory' working with dynamic and exciting start up companies to explore opportunities to work together and help them navigate their entry into the food retail industry. 
Represented M&S foods at Open Innovation forums, global conferences and thought leadership events across a diverse range of topics in technical innovation and sustainability to continually grow my network and knowledge. Ensuring we use latest science, technology and thinking to inform our decisions and brand direction across all aspects of food safety, quality, integrity, sustainability and innovation.

Marks and Spencer

Food Group lead for Technical Innovation, New Science & Emerging Risks

Project to deliver new way of working between M&S and supplier partner. Designed, developed and embedded new ways of working with a strategic supplier on the principles of Earned Autonomy, selected benefits of which are being implemented across broader supply base. Whilst also managing the technologist responsible for day to day category and supplier operations acted as Technical lead of VO across the Food to Go category, notable success of identifying savings across multiple products and processes while maintaining highest quality standards.

Specialist Technical Manager  - Food To Go 

Lead for M&S on Microbiology, passionately ensuring both prevention of food safety issues and proactive use of microbiology to maximise quality, shelf life and efficiency in our supply base. Significant part of role was to advise and coach others to enable them to make pragmatic risk based decisions on their product safety and stability. Also to challenge industry norms to enable M&S to both protect the customer and the brand, but also to drive innovation and standards across the food industry.
Role was wider than just microbiology and involved being the expert for the business in all types of authenticity testing. Working with our expert service provider to decide the most appropriate tests to provide confidence and reassurance in the authenticity of M&S products within the due diligence budget. Supporting the category and integrity teams interpret the non-binary results to guide the business on next steps in an investigation or issue.

Company Microbiologist 

Responsibility for the food safety and integrity standards, policies and practices of M&S foods sold outside the UK. Countries ranged from Western and Eastern Europe to MIddle East (incl UAE, Qatar, Kuwait) and SE Asia ( incl China, Hong Kong, Singapore). Set up and developed the food safety and procurement policies from scratch for M&S's international business. Both retail standards of operation (using imported products from UK) including supply chain logistics across shipping, daily chilled air freight & local supply chain providers, as well as defining local sourcing standards for hospitality operations where the scale was too small to justify UK product use. Involved extensive pragmatic risk based decision making to protect the M&S customers and brand, whilst maintaining an appropriate and commercially achievable standard for the country we were trading in. Developed significant stakeholder engagement skills with senior members of both suppliers and franchise partners to ensure standards were upheld by local teams as significant amount of work done remotely from UK.

Specialist Technical Manager for International Foods 

Senior member of team, with responsibility for raw protein 'Cook' range and then Healthy ready meals which includes iconic and industry leading innovation in our 'Simply Fuller Longer' range. 
Also delivered a flavour innovation project and meat species DNA mapping across supply base following UK food industry integrity issues ('Horsegate'). Key member of small team who developed and wrote M&S's first Integrity Manufacturing standard and audit, leading the way in innovative thinking in this area before VACCP and TACCP had become commonplace indsutry terms.

Senior Food Technologist  - Meal Solutions

Managed large, diverse and complex supply base of ambient stable factories and agents across UK and Europe. 
Developed a knowledge and expertise in thermal processing validation across low & high acid preserved foods as well as other food safety controls.
Delivered significant amount of product development and introduced cost effective and operationally feasible culinary processing techniques into traditionally highly industrial processing plants.
Nurtured new suppliers, who had never experienced large UK retail, into supplying an international brand with industry leading safety and integrity standards.

Senior Food Technologist - Groceries

Experience in prepared meals, biscuits, savoury snacks, and in store hospitality formats.

Karen Job