Sustainability Breakfast: Food Waste in the Circular Economy

Guest speakers

Emma Bourne, Director Circular Economy, Defra

Emma has been in the Civil Service for nearly 20 years, having started out at mental health and criminal justice charity. She has worked on a range of social and economic policy issues and led multiple major government programmes. She now leads Defra's Circular Economy Portfolio, including major reforms of the UK's packaging sectors and work to develop a new, long-term Circular Economy Strategy and sector-based roadmaps. 

Nicola Robinson, Director, Alliance Food Sourcing

Nicola has 25 years of experience in the food, drink and retail sectors, covering executive, commercial and marketing positions. at Mondelez, Coca Cola Europacific Partners, Kettle Foods and Tesco. She has also run her own consultancy business where she was involved in many people development and training, strategic and structural projects for a wide variety of global businesses. Nicky was appointed the director of Alliance Food Sourcing, an initiative in collaboration with the IGD, FareShare and The Felix Project, to improve the supply of food to the charity sector tackling food insecurity in the UK.

Dini McGrath, Cofounder, Zest

Dini spent +8 years working in the food and drinks industry for Sipsmith and Beam Suntory. She then went on to co-found Zest (previously The Wonki Collective), an organisation tackling food waste by leveraging AI/ML to revolutionise management and intelligent reallocation of food surplus in the manufacturing supply chain. Today they work with some of the largest food manufacturers including Nestle. Committed to fostering a network effect among female innovators, Dini was awarded the 2024 Women in Innovation award, and actively supports emerging female founders across the UK, sharing lessons from her journey to create a stronger, more impactful ecosystem of changemakers.

Alina Sartogo, Cofounder, Zest

Alina worked as a commercial dispute lawyer for +10 years. In parallel with her law career, she is an experienced and successful entrepreneur, creating Europe’s first international club for art collectors in 2012 and a bespoke furniture design company in 2016. Alina co-founded Zest in 2022, with the ambition of creating financial incentives for the food industry to become more sustainable. She has always been passionate about the environment and studied law and economics applied to sustainability at the University of Cambridge back in 2005.