Hosted by Tesco
Please click on their name to find out more about each mentor
Ben has over 18 years experience in the food industry working across both manufacturing and retail, he is a fellow of the IFST, an active member of the Food Safety SIG and this year’s Vice President.
He started his career at Bakkavor where he was selected for their technical graduate scheme and throughout his 8 years there he worked in a variety of technical roles covering Quality Assurance, Process Development and Site Technical Management in the chilled convenience food sector. His last role was site Technical Manager at the Bakkavor Desserts site in Newark.
He joined Tesco in 2012 as a Technical Manager in the Convenience department and during his time at Tesco he covered Technical Manager positions responsible for the majority of chilled prepared foods areas. Tesco gave him the opportunity to progress his career and lead technical teams as Head of Technical across a number of diverse and interesting categories including Frozen Food, Bakery, Dairy, Impulse, Beers, Wines and Spirits and Chilled Prepared Foods.
His current position is Head of Technical for Tesco Central Europe which covers the Tesco businesses in Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. In this role he leads the technical teams responsible for food and non-food technical, store standards, technical operations, packaging, sustainable diets and general merchandise.
Matti is an AfN Registered Nutritionist working within the FMCG (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods) industry, at Huel. Matti specialises in the formulation of food products, ingredient management and product testing. with a background in supplement formulation.
Hi, my name is Liv and I am a technologist in chilled meals at Tesco. I joined Tesco back in September 2019 on a degree apprenticeship scheme studying food science and technology in partnership with the university of Lincoln, alongside working as a technologist. The role of a technical is to ensure products are safe, legal and great quality, working in partnership with product developers and buyers. A day in the life of a technologist can vary from reviewing product quality in store, to visiting supplier factories and reviewing the production of our products.
Becca has worked in the food industry for over 10 years. For the past 4 years she’s worked at innocent. Initially Becca was helping innocent set up their first factory based in Rotterdam. Now Becca looks after the technical/sustainable management of a ‘basket’ of fruit.
Karen has worked at Tesco for over 25 years since joining on the Graduate Scheme. Karen has worked in various roles across the business including buying, marketing and brand management.
Karen now leads the Healthy and Sustainable Diets programme working in the sustainability team where with a cross functional team we are helping customers to move to a healthier and more sustainable diet.
Technical and Sustainability Manager at BOL Foods with over 5 years experience in Product, Technical, Operations & Sustainability roles in the food industry.
Graduating with a B Sc. Food Science and Health from the University of Limerick, I have since worked within the retail and manufacturing industry in various roles throughout the supply chain since 2016.
My previous roles within Retail include, Quality Assurance of Product, HACCP Coordinator for Store Operations, and Technical Assistant and working in the Supply Base as a Technical Information Officer.
I am currently a Standards & Audit Manager within Tesco, managing the audit programme for our Suppliers to ensure they produce safe, legal, quality product.
Carmen is a Technical Manager at Raynor Foods and is responsible for the management of technical, quality and sustainability compliance. She ensures that the Food safety and Quality management system (FSQMS) is fully compliant with all relevant certification standards and at best excels as ‘top of class’ in our industry.
My name is Rory, I am the Technical Manager of ISB Bread looking after quality and safety for the area and previously in have looked after Milk & Cream. Before joining the Tesco team, I spent 7 years within the supply base working across Technical, New Product Development and Process.
I have been in the field of sensory and consumer research, in both clientside and agency roles across a career spanning 30 years. I began my professional journey working in a laboratory environment, supporting a Quality Assurance programme for raw materials for a large Blue Chip company before moving into the Consumer Research discipline as a research executive in a small consumer research agency team.
Over the next 12 years I built up hands on experience of different tools and techniques, from sensory evaluation through quantitative consumer research (and statistical analysis) through to qualitative research, across a wide range of product categories, encompassing food, beverage, non-food and pharmaceutically active products. I then moved into a clientside role, where for the best part of a decade, I was in a Global role within the Chocolate Category for Mondelez, overseeing sensory and consumer research activities across value management, product quality improvements and innovation projects.
For the last 8 years I have been Client Services Director at SAM Sensory Dimensions, where I lead a team of 30 researchers who each partner with client companies covering a broad range of food, beverage and personal and home care categories.
Karen studied Retail Management at Bournemouth University. She has worked at Tesco for almost 10 years. At Tesco she started in product development in health and beauty, moved to food and then moved into a commercial buying role. Now Karen leads the buying team for Paper and Home Essentials which includes Toilet roll, kitchen towel and a variety of home essentials such as bin bags, cling film and rubber gloves.
Hi I am Jade Murby and I currently work for Samworth Brothers under the meals category as a Senior Development Technologist.
Samworth Brothers is the first company I have worked for since graduating University.
I love my job and the people with the perks of eating food daily while developing new and exciting ready meals!
Sarah Green is the Head of Product Development for Food for Now at Tesco. With over 20 years’ experience in the food industry across Technical and Development leadership roles in both fresh and packaged products. She is passionate about creating products that customers love, driving category growth and coaching and developing people.
Sarah graduated from the University of Surrey in 2004 with a BSc in Nutrition and Food Science.
Kit has been with Tesco since 2014, joining as an undergraduate placement student in the product development team. Having returned to the university of Nottingham to complete a BsC in Chemistry, he returned to the business on the graduate scheme in 2016. During this time he has worked in various product development roles across non-food, packaged and fresh foods. His current role is Lead Product Development Manager, looking after Impulse and Front of Store, leading the team to deliver compelling propositions within our food for now missions.
Sharna Young, an alumna of Sheffield Hallam University with a BSc in Food & Nutrition. She currently works as a Food Product Developer at Tesco. Sharna’s journey to Tesco took an interesting path—she initially started her career with a short stint in a technical role for an onion and root vegetable processing company straight out of university, having graduated during the COVID period. However, it didn’t take long for her to realize that her true passion lay away from smelling of onions to product development. This realisation led her to Tesco, where she has spent the last 2 years. Sharna thrives on the everyday challenges of developing and improving products, currently focusing on Red Meat and most recently within Breaded and Roasted chicken.
Born in France, Emmanuelle has spent the last 22 years in the UK. Emmanuelle joined Tesco in 2003 as a Technical Manager with a background of work in the supply base and two masters degree in Food and Environmental Sciences. Emmanuelle was appointed Technical and Agriculture Director for the UK and ROI in 2018 before taking on the lead for Quality in 2021.
Passionate and determined to deliver for the business and customers through the establishment of short and longer term strategies, Emmanuelle is also focused on developing high performing teams and developing talent pipelines.
Emmanuelle lives in London with her partner Boris and 2 sons, Antoine and Arthur, and spends most of her spare time driving them around the country to various squash events!
Hi, I’m Phoebe, and I graduated in 2022 from the University of Birmingham, where I studied International Relations. I am now on Tesco’s Business Graduate Scheme. For my first placement, I worked within our food technical team, supporting Impulse (everything fun like confectionery and biscuits).
I have since moved to a commercial buying role specifically Adult drinks, which sits within the exciting world of soft drinks. A real passion for me is DE&I, which is something I’m able to embed in my everyday work and lead within Tesco.