Andrew is the founder of Big Idea Ventures (BIV). BIV’s purpose is to solve the world’s biggest challenges by supporting the world’s best entrepreneurs, scientists and engineers. Our first fund called the New Protein Fund I invests in plant-based, cell-based and fermentation enabled foods and ingredients to impact climate change, animal welfare and personal health. Investors include Tyson Foods, Temasek, Buhler, Givaudan, AAK, Bel Group, Avril and others.

BIV’s second fund is focused on working with Top US universities to create the future of food companies in rural communities and regions.

Andrew is an Advisory Board member for Tufts Nutrition Council. Friedman School Entrepreneurship Advisor. Harvard Business School graduate, Procter & Gamble brand management trained, Andrew spent a number of years as an entrepreneur growing companies.

Andrew is married, has a daughter and the toughest 10 lb fluffy white dog resembling Snowy from the Tin Tin books.

Kirsty is a Principal at JamJar Investments, the innocent drinks founders’ venture capital fund. JamJar is a £100m seed VC investing in exceptional founding teams to help them create, nurture and scale challenger consumer brands in the UK. Investments include Deliveroo, Tails.com, Toney’s Chocolonely, Babylon Health, Skin+Me and Wild Cosmetics.

Prior to JamJar, Kirsty trained at consumer goods giant Unilever where she worked on marketing and customer analytics across a variety of brands within their personal care and food portfolios.

She holds a BA in Economics and Management from the University of Oxford and an MSc in Global Politics from The London School of Economics.

Ivan has been an active venture capital investor for the last 25 years and he is the co-founder of Five Seasons Ventures, the first European venture fund fully focused on consumer Foodtech.

He is passionate about product and technology innovation aimed at solving big challenges in the food industry: from alternative sources of proteins, to functional foods, from new models of food distribution, to the reduction of food waste.  At Five Seasons he invested, among others, in Butternut Box (DNVB pet nutrition), THIS.co (plant-based meat alternatives), Cortilia (D2C fresh food retailer), La Fourche (D2C organic groceries), Air-Up (reusable water bottle + flavour pods), KoRo (D2C natural healthy snaking), YFood Labs (meal replacements) and Just Spices (D2C spices; acq. by Kraft Heinz)

His experience includes structuring investments, organizational and strategy development, setting up governance for growth and planning for successful exits. 

In his spare time, he enjoys family life, fly fishing, and practicing jiu-jitsu with his son Adam.

Daina Spedding is an Investor at BGF and is responsible for finding and completing new investment opportunities, as well as supporting the boards of the investee companies. Daina has led numerous investments at BGF since joining the team in 2019, with a particular focus on the consumer and e-commerce sectors. She is passionate about backing female founders in particular and developing BGF’s Diversity and Inclusion strategy.

Before joining BGF’s London team, she worked at Blue Coast Capital, a single family backed investment group focusing on consumer investments globally. Daina has also spent five years in PwC’s transaction services team, specialising in company valuations and analysis. Daina is CFA qualified and holds a Master’s degree in Strategic Management from EDHEC Business School in France. She is married and has two young sons who keep her on her toes at all times.

Harriet Lamb is passionate about environmental and social issues with a track record in making a difference around the globe. She is an experienced CEO who built the global movement Fairtrade – a certification scheme that sets standards to make trade fairer, working with producers in the developing world as well as thousands of companies and retailers, and creating a vibrant grassroots movement.

Following 15 years with Fairtrade – as CEO of the UK Fairtrade Foundation and then of Fairtrade International – Harriet led International Alert, a peacebuilding organisation. She was then appointed CEO of Ashden, which promotes just climate solutions including sustainable energy in the UK and globally.

Harriet has won a number of awards including a CBE, Orange Businesswoman of the Year, and Cosmopolitan EcoQueen. She was also the first woman Honorary Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge

Co-founder of Leon, food campaigner, speaker and non-executive director.

Before founding Leon, Henry worked at Bain & Company, working on private equity transactions and helping large companies to develop their strategies. Previously he was a journalist at the Daily Telegraph and a commis chef at the Michelin-starred Inn on the Park restaurant in London.

Henry is a regular speaker on how to create a purpose-lead business and how to create a better food system. He is the co-founder and chair of Chefs in Schools and sits on the board of Rockfish. He also advises the CEOs of a handful of high growth leisure businesses.

Anna is Head of Environment for Tesco Plc. At Tesco, Anna is responsible for the Group’s global climate change, sustainable agriculture, sustainable diets, marine and forest sustainability agendas. Anna is also responsible for Tesco’s flagship partnership with WWF. The cornerstone of the partnership focuses around the publication of the Sustainable Basket Metric. Through the Sustainable Basket Metric Tesco and WWF aim to halve the environmental impact of the average UK shopper’s basket and invite wider industry and civil society partners to join in to achieve this shared ambition.

Prior to joining Tesco, Anna was Head of Sustainability for Nestlé UK & Ireland, where she led the development and roll out of an integrated sustainability strategy across the multi-category business. Before moving in-house, Anna spent 10 years in sustainability consultancy in Europe and Asia.

Paul leads the sustainability strategy at Greggs, with key focus on delivering against their Greggs Pledge plan and Net Zero ambition. Paul originally qualified as an industrial chemist in the coatings industry before moving into regulatory law prior to joining Greggs. Since taking on his current role he has been involved in the ongoing development of Greggs long term strategy as well as engaging with Government and other key stakeholders to shape longer term strategic direction for Greggs and the wider sector.

Susan joined Asda in June 2020 into a new role created to drive Asda’s strategic focus on Sustainability. She “quarter-backs” Asda’s cross functional efforts across the Better Planet agenda, mobilising activities including our journeys towards net zero, elimination of waste, optimising packaging and building a greener portfolio. Susan is a member of the BRC’s Climate Action Roadmap Steering Committee and chair of the Customer Engagement pathway.

Susan’s early career was spent at Kantar in insights, analytics and retail consulting, with a particular focus on Shopper Behaviour. Prior to Asda she spent 8 years at PepsiCo in a range of sales strategy and marketing roles, most recently leading the Brand Planning process and Better For You Snacking agenda for West Europe. Susan completed an Executive MBA in 2012 with a final dissertation examining the role of retailers in the obesity crisis.

Robin grew up as a retailer, running commercial categories for both M&S and Tesco between 1998 and 2015. He joined Just Eat UK in 2015 to set up their restaurant partner perks programme building value through partnerships beginning with food wholesale, finance, card payments & utilities. Other areas of responsibility followed from sustainability and FMCG to grocery and partner e-commerce.

In 2020 after the merger with Takeaway.com he took on a wider global marketing remit to set up a team running global partnerships including sponsorships, sustainability, grocery strategy, FMCG and branded restaurant marketing. Much more importantly, he lives in North London with his wife and three children and if they haven’t exhausted him then the endurance sports usually do.