Focus on the Future Conference & Expo

Melissa Abbott, trends and culinary insights manager, The Hartman Group, has been tracking key trends in the health, wellness, food and retail industries for more than 15 years. She has extensive experience in ethnographic research and is a retail culinary expert with clients ranging from Kraft Foods to Safeway and even gastro pubs in Ireland. Among the first to analyze the European soy foods sector and evolving natural/organic products consumer in the United Kingdom, Abbott has developed a deep understanding of retail and cultural trends in her consultations with a variety of CPG companies and retailers. She has appeared on The Food Network, and writes Food Life for The Hartman Group, a monthly consumer-centric column on wellness focusing on the latest health supportive food trends.

Lori Colman is a founding partner and CEO of Colman Brohan Davis. Colman has been instrumental in developing brand strategies and marketing initiatives for companies in the food, dietary supplement and ingredients sectors. She is a frequent speaker at industry events, has written articles on brand positioning, product launches, channel management and planning, and has a particular passion for adding value to commodity-style products and markets. Colman is a firm believer in understanding consumer behavior and putting customers at the core of all marketing and communications decisions.

Lynn Dornblaser is the director, CPG Trend Insight, for Mintel International Group. New product trends have been the focus of Dornblaser’s career for more than 20 years, giving her a unique perspective on the marketplace and new product development. A trained journalist and experienced public speaker, Dornblaser has been quoted by major U.S. news organizations, including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times and CNN.

Daniel Fabricant, Ph.D., vice president, chief scientific and regulatory affairs officer, Natural Products Association, works with government relations and regulatory affairs staff to develop and implement policies and appropriate responses to government initiatives in the regulatory and policy arenas. In that capacity, he works with members of Congress and their staffs, as well as with officials in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other agencies whose actions have direct impact on the natural products industry, providing guidance on regulatory, safety, nutrition and health issues, and working with other groups in industry, academia and the media. Dr. Fabricant is responsible for developing strategy and providing senior leadership, staff management and financial oversight of the NPA scientific and regulatory programs, including the Association’s Natural Certification for Personal Care, Home Care and Dietary Supplement GMP Certification. He has also served as interim CEO and executive director of NPA, interim president of NPA China and ex officio president of the Natural Products Foundation.

Steven French, managing partner at the Natural Marketing Institute (NMI), has more than 25 years of strategic marketing, business development and management experience. Complementing bachelor’s and master’s degrees in marketing, French has accumulated extensive insight and knowledge into health, wellness, environmentalism, sustainability and social responsibility across a multitude of products, services and industries. He is a frequent speaker at industry events and conferences, a regular contributor to media sources, and the author of numerous published articles and research reports.

Jay S. Golden, Ph.D., co-director of the multi-university Sustainability Consortium at Arizona State University (ASU), is an assistant professor and honors faculty in the School of Sustainability and the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at ASU. He focuses his teaching and research on the nexus of organizational strategies and technology innovations for sustainability. At the Sustainability Consortium, Dr. Golden works to develop a global standard for indexing and consumer facing the sustainability of consumer products. Dr. Golden also founded and directs the National Center of Excellence on SMART Innovations at ASU. He received his doctorate in engineering from the University of Cambridge, and masters in environmental engineering and sustainable development from a joint program of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Cambridge. He also holds a Professional Mastery of Project Management from Stanford University and has a bachelor’s in management. Dr. Golden was appointed to the UN Life Cycle Management Task Force and was named an AT&T Industrial Ecology Fellow.

Barbara Katz, president, HealthFocus International, is a seasoned marketing and consumer research professional with more than 25 years of experience in the health and wellness, food, pharma and biotech industries. Having worked with brands in many countries and having lived in Shanghai, the United Kingdom and Australia, Katz provides a global perspective on consumer insights and branding. She spent the first 10 years of her career in food ingredient sales and marketing at Sensient Technology before founding the Consumer Knowledge Centre to focus on developing brands for moms and kids using a unique in-depth ethnographic methodology for insights into the needs of young people. Katz was then recruited by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals where she oversaw portfolio strategy for the $1 billion global dairy business. She is a frequent speaker on global needs in consumer health and nutrition, authors a number of articles focusing on health attitudes in different parts of the world, and recently co-authored a book, Advances in Dairy Ingredients (Blackwell).

Patrick F. O’Loughlin, open innovation networks business leader, The Clorox Company, is a proven marketing professional who delivers results through a combination of analytics, creativity and teamwork. At Clorox, O’Loughlin helps discover and develop innovative products for existing and future brands, and partnerships specifically within natural consumer products. Prior to The Clorox Company, O’Loughlin spent 12 years at Kraft Foods in systems/operations management, category sales systems and brand management, where he worked on the Knudsen, Breakstone's and Taco Bell Home Originals brands.

David Sprinkle worked for a dozen years as an analyst and editor for consumer packaged goods market reports by Packaged Facts, a division of the Market Research Group (Rockville, Md.), before assuming his current role as research director. Sprinkle has a master’s of business administration with a concentration in marketing from Tulane University’s A.B. Freeman School of Business, where he also taught courses in business communications.

Travis T. Tygart is the chief executive officer of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), the agency responsible for anti-doping education, testing and results management in the United States for Olympic and Paralympic athletes. Tygart has surfaced as a world leader in the anti-doping movement. His leadership includes significant education and research initiatives in support of protecting the health and safety of clean athletes and the integrity of sport. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and with a juris doctorate from Southern Methodist University, Order of the Coif, Tygart was previously an associate in a sports law practice working with athletes and national sport entities.

Svetlana Uduslivaia is a research analyst for Euromonitor International, where she manages the research program on Canadian consumer markets and coordinates a team of in-country analysts located in Canada. Previously, Uduslivaia worked as an in-country research analyst for Canada, covering industries such as pet food and pet care products, cosmetics and toiletries, packaged foods and many others.

Marc Ullman, Esq., partner at Ullman, Shapiro & Ullman LLP, represents clients in matters relating to FDA and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) matters, regulatory issues, FTC proceedings and litigation. His practice includes representation relating to FDA compliance including labels, labeling, claims, good manufacturing practices, as well as a number of complex proceedings with the FDA relating to the agency’s powers under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994. Since 2007, Ullman has assisted clients at the center of the "Pet Food Recall" connected with the adulteration of wheat gluten with melamine, the recall of StarCaps Dietary Supplements following the suspension of several NFL players whose drug screening tests indicated the presence of undeclared prescription drugs in the product, and one of the companies conducting a major recall of pistachios due to potential contamination with salmonella.

Tom Vierhile is the director of Datamonitor’s Product Launch Analytics, the 2009 successor to the Productscan Online database of new products, now fully integrated with Datamonitor’s Consumer Products Knowledge Center. He has more than 20 years of experience in consumer packaged goods reporting and analysis.  Vierhile is an internationally recognized expert on new product marketing and has made television and/or radio appearances on CNN, PBS, the BBC and Fox News Channel.  Additionally, publications like USA Today and The Wall Street Journal frequently call upon Vierhile for his views on new product launches and packaged goods trends.