Wendy van Buren

I%27ve spent my career inside the companies that make specialized nutrition and the ingredients behind it: Director and VP roles at Danone Specialized Nutrition today, and earlier at Cargill, ADM, Novozymes, and Bunge. Most of my work has been the unglamorous side of innovation - deciding what not to develop, harmonizing ingredients across markets, getting clinical and regulatory right before commercial gets loud.30+ years leading innovation and portfolio strategy in specialized nutrition, ingredients, and CPG.
I turn complex, fragmented portfolios into focused growth engines; medical and pediatric nutrition, infant formula, therapeutic foods, and functional ingredients. I work with Jobs-to-be-Done and other frameworks that improve the needs based success. I%27ve lead new innovation pipeline builds, shaped new to market focus, and reduced the innovation pipeline in some cases >40% reduction and where needed to anchor regionally and where to focus on global reach.
I%27m based in Amsterdam, work in English (learning Dutch), and know Minneapolis well from years at Target and Cargill. I%27m useful to boards where the company is growth-stage, the portfolio has outgrown the team, or a European product is trying to land in the US (or the reverse). Categories I know deeply: medical nutrition, Ingredients, fermentation and bioactives, functional ingredients protein, fiber. I%27ve worked in every part of the food value chain.

I say yes to monetary investment because I think advisors should have something at risk alongside the founders.

I%27m writing a book on innovation strategy this year and at this stage in my career can add real value as part of a board and would like to move into a selective few portfolio of board and advisory roles.

What I bring to a board: strategic innovation, higher success rate, focus, de-risking, R&I to market execution across the value chain perspective.