My background is in bakery technology. My father was a baker and owned his own business. My two older brothers took over the business. I wanted to be in this industry and studied bakery science and technology. But I saw my brothers working like crazy, day and night and thought; "maybe that’s not my future". When I finished my studies Unilever was one of the big companies in the bakery world, so I applied hoping there would be something for me. That was in 1988.
Normally you start as a scientist within research and from there move to the business. I started at the other end, with our customers. I was a technical after-sales manager. I gave demonstrations and solved problems in factories. For instance when baking biscuit wafers between irons, the liquid fat in the wafer batter is enormously important. If the fat is not right, either the irons have to be cleaned more often or the fat burns. We would change all the characteristics of the fat to meet the needs of each particular customer. Really tailor-made business-to-business solutions.
My next role was as development manager for two factories, responsible for the process and product development. So, getting innovations onto the lines and into production. One factory burnt down after one week; the other was an old factory that had to be rebuilt. But it was enormous financial pressure. The longer a factory line is down the longer it’s not producing. They can be tremendously stressful times. Then I got a call from the head of Bakery Category in Food Research. He said, "I want to have a chat with you because I think we need you". So I moved into research, as head of the test bakery. My role was to bring business to research and science to the business. There are brilliant, brilliant scientists here. That’s the reason I’m here. There is so much potential.
When Unilever sold the bakery category in 2000 they didn’t sell the expertise. They realised what they had was unique; brilliant scientists, great technologists, excellent product developers. So as a unit we were given budget for a year to realign ourselves. We approached other Unilever categories and sold our expertise. It really felt like it was our own company. Three years later we had grown from 12 to 30 people. My current role is creating research & development programmes for local European brands. It has the same element as every job that I’ve done, closing the gap between science and business, bringing people together.
