Meet the judges

Principal Strategist, Mintel

Alex’s expertise and passion for beverages means he is a highly sought-after speaker for both international conferences and international clients. For Alex, insights on food and drink trends must be data-backed but also imaginative; they must challenge established thinking, with empathy for clients and consumers at the heart. His creativity has seen him win multiple insight awards and achieve regular media coverage. Prior to Mintel, Alex was a journalist and a teacher.

Principal Strategist, Mintel

Andrew is a Principal Strategist at Mintel, based in London, where he helps global beauty and personal care brands turn complex consumer insight into clear, commercially actionable strategies. With more than 16 years of experience across the beauty industry, he specialises in understanding how consumer behaviour, cultural change, and category innovation are reshaping the future of beauty. Working with leading global brands, Andrew partners with marketers, R&D teams, and senior business leaders to identify growth opportunities, challenge assumptions, and translate emerging trends into practical action.

Principal Strategist, Mintel

A thought leader in her field, Ayisha joined Mintel in 2018 with 13 years’ experience in the food industry. She provides award-winning insight into consumer demands, market developments, and industry trends acress multiple categories. Her previous New Product Development and Trends roles with major UK retailers gave her invaluable insight into private label innovation. In manufacturing, Ayisha developed innovative concepts for numerous blue-ship clients, utilising her first-class BSc degree in Food Science.

Principal Strategist, Mintel

Claire Tassin is the Principal Strategist for Wellness at Mintel. Prior to joining Mintel, she launched and led Morning Consult’s retail and e-commerce vertical. She previously held client engagement roles at Gartner and CEB, advising global organisations on brand strategy, consumer loyalty, innovation, and growth. With more than a decade of experience working with brands on evolving consumer behaviours, she brings deep expertise in CPG, particularly across health, lifestyle, and generational trends.

Principal Strategist, Mintel

Jamie is an expert in competitive intelligence and strategic thinking. He has more than 20 years’ experience leading projects for domain expansion, M&A, open innovation, competitive response, and strategic early warning. As a principal strategist focused on global innovation and strategy, Jamie uses this background to identify both macro and category-level trends that allow clients to think further ahead and develop more future-proof innovation, marketing and portfolio management strategies. Prior to joining Mintel Jamie spent 12 years with Kimberly-Clark Corporation’s Enterprise Growth incubator.

Principal Strategist, Mintel

Jenny Zegler has 18 years of experience covering the food and beverage industry. Her specialty is in tracking food and drink trends, and she has been instrumental in Mintel’s global annual trends since 2013. She regularly shares insights on the now, next and future of food and drink with Mintel clients, in the media, and at conferences. Prior to joining Mintel in 2012, Jenny spent six years as a journalist, primarily on food and beverage trade magazines.

Principal Strategist, Mintel

Jonny is an experienced global good and drink analyst who concentrates on ‘big picture’ industry themes that will shape the industry over the coming years, such as the impact of GLP-1 drugs, AI and the rise of Gen Z. Jonny appears regularly in media outlines, such as CNBC, The Economist and BBC, to discuss major industry news stories.

Principal Strategist, Mintel

Nick is Mintel’s expert on all things retail, leading strategic thinking across global retail developments and shopper behaviour. He helps clients understand shopper needs and unlock opportunities and works closely with Mintel’s global analyst teams to shape our research.

Principal Strategist, Mintel

Stephanie joined Mintel in 2013 and is a key contributor to its food and drink thought leadership. With a background in food science and nearly two decades of experience across nutrition, consumer insights and innovation, she brings a strong understanding of trends, ingredients and market dynamics.

Senior Director of Food and Drink, APAC, Mintel

Megan combines a background in food technology and marketing with deep industry expertise, to help businesses anticipate changing consumer needs and identify opportunities for growth across APAC.

VP of Insights and Consulting, China, Mintel 

Ruyi brings nearly two decades of expertise in market research and consumer insights, with a long-standing focus on consumer trend analysis, product innovation, and identifying commercial growth opportunities. She joined Mintel in 2013, where she provides forward-looking insights and strategic support to leading companies across the consumer goods, retail, ingredients, and advertising and media sectors – helping brands better understand evolving consumer needs and capture future opportunities.

Online Editor, The Grocer

Jacqui is the editor of thegrocer.co.uk, where she leads The Grocer’s digital editorial strategy and oversees daily news, analysis and features covering the UK food and drink industry. She works closely with The Grocer’s journalists to deliver agenda-setting journalism, break news and tell the stories behind the businesses, people and ideas shaping the future of food and drink. Jacqui also writes regular comment pieces, hosts industry events and moderates debates with senior leaders from across the grocery sector.

Editor, Cosmetics Business Magazine

Editor of Cosmetics Business magazine and the Cosmetics Business Trend Report, Jo Allen is an award-winning beauty journalist with more than 25 years’ experience covering the cosmetics industry. At Cosmetics Business, Jo covers the entire beauty supply chain, from ingredient innovation and formulation breakthroughs to packaging developments, consumer behaviour, brand strategy and market trends. She has a particular interest in identifying and reporting on the emerging trends shaping the future of beauty.

Vice President of China Cosmetics Magazine

Chen Mutu is Vice President of China Cosmetics magazine, where he is responsible for the publication’s international partnerships, investment, and industry collaboration initiatives. He is among the China’s Ministry of Education’s first cohort of Outstanding Innovation and Entrepreneurship Mentors and is a member of the China Public Relations Association. He also serves as Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of the Qingyinghui (Young Elite Club) Alumni Association at Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management (SEM).

CEO, The K Beauty Science

Jae Hong Park is a cosmetics industry journalist with more than 34 years of experience. He began his career as a reporter at the Daily Cosmetics Newspaper in 1992 and later served as Editor-in-Chief and Director at Cosmetics Newspaper. In 2018, he founded The K Beauty Science, a specialist media publication covering cosmetics science, technology and developments in the beauty industry, where he currently serves as CEO.

Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, Cosmetics Science

Seiji Mihara began his career at a major consumer electronics manufacturer and a leading publishing company before establishing an independent branding consultancy. Since then, he has led numerous product and brand development projects for cosmetics companies and advised businesses entering the cosmetics industry on business strategy.

Vice President – R&D, AMEA Region Packaging, Global Emerging Market Platform Capabilities, Mondelez International

Gautam is a Global R&D executive with 26+ years of international experience in leading enterprise innovation, technology transformation and organizational capability across Fortune 500 consumer goods companies operating in high-growth international markets. He has held executive leadership roles across Mondelez, P&G, Diageo and Huhtamaki, delivering innovation, technology transformation and organizational capability across food, beverage, home care and personal care businesses.

CMI Head for Global Hair Care at Unilever

Yingyi Mo (Frankie) is CMI Head for Global Hair Care at Unilever. With nearly 20 years of experience in consumer insights, she is passionate about transforming insights into business growth. From crafting innovation strategies to helping brands successfully land innovation in market, her experience across local, regional and global roles enables her to combine foresight, data and storytelling to unlock new opportunities and build meaningful brands.

Senior Director, Innovation Hub for ASEAN & South Pacific at The Coca-Cola Company

Over the past 18 years, Thanh has led innovation, portfolio transformation, and commercialization across global consumer goods companies, helping bring consumer-centric ideas to life at scale.

Editor-in-Chief of Retail Media

Lorna Gloria-Wards is the Editor-in-Chief of Retail Media, the Australian publisher of Retail World, Convenience World, Retail Pharmacy and Retail Pharmacy Assistants trade business magazines. Ms Gloria-Wards has a Bachelor of Arts degree, 17 years of experience as a journalist and 15 years as an editor). She manages Retail World and Convenience World magazines.

VP, Insights & Strategy at Coty Consumer Beauty

Clément Pasquier is VP, Insights & Strategy at Coty Consumer Beauty, where he helps shape growth, innovation, and portfolio decisions through consumer-centric, data-driven strategies. With international leadership experience, he partners with senior executives to identify future opportunities, challenge conventional thinking, and turn consumer understanding into lasting business value and competitive advantage.

President of Derma & Health Care at Beiersdorf

Burcu Andreae-Nehlsen is President of Derma & Health Care at Beiersdorf, leading a global business built on the belief that science can improve everyday lives. Throughout her international career spanning more than two decades, she has championed innovation, transformed brands, and unlocked growth by connecting scientific discovery with real consumer needs.

Consumer Trends Reporter, Ad Age

Erika Wheless is the consumer trends reporter at Ad Age. She has previously covered food, creators and technology and now focuses on consumer trends across categories. She is excited to be a judge for this year’s Mintel’s Most Innovative Awards to see what is coming down the innovation pipeline and to see how that influences mainstream trends later on.

Senior Editor, Food Navigator and Host of Soup-To-Nuts Podcast

Elizabeth Crawford is an award-winning multi-media journalist, senior editor for FoodNavigator-USA and host of FoodNavigator-USA’s Soup-To-Nuts podcast. She has more than 20 years as a business-to-business reporter covering the food, dietary supplement and healthcare industries through business, regulatory and legislative lenses.

Chief Marketing and Enterprise Intelligence Office Unilever Global PC and US

Kalindi is the chief marketing and enterprise intelligence office Unilever Global PC and US. Previously, she was Global Vice President for Consumer Foresight and Predictive Analytics, Enterprise Marketing and Data at The Estee Lauder Companies and also held insight leadership roles for Colgate Palmolive for nearly 20 years.