Leilah joined NutriLeads in January 2023 as a Communications Manager.

Prior to this Leilah worked at Edelman Amsterdam as an Account Director for various international B2B clients. Before that she fulfilled B2B Marketing Communications and Corporate Communications roles at DSM Food Specialties, Grodan Group, Rockwool Technical Insulation, Philips Research & Rabobank Nederland.

Leilah holds a Bachelor in Corporate Communications and NIMA B certification in Business Marketing. Leilah is also an NLP Life Coach Practitioner and has her own coaching practice for mothers. She is originally South African, but has lived in the Netherlands for over 20 years

Jan joined Nutrileads in November 2020 as Chief Operations Officer, responsible for finance and the end-to-end scale up of production and supply chain.

Jan has been active in the global B-t-B Food, Agri and Pharma-supply industries since 1981. He has held numerous managerial positions at DMV-Campina and subsequently at Royal FrieslandCampina, and later also served as CEO at DFE Pharma and then at Farm Frites International, as well as interim Director/Partner at Custom Management.

Next to his executive roles he has been active in several non-executive governance roles at different companies and sports federations since 2004.

Jan holds a BSc in Food Technology from HAS Den Bosch (1981) and graduated on the Executive Training Program of the European Committee in Tokyo (1989)

Joana joined Nutrileads in April 2022. Prior to this Joana worked for 10.5 years at DSM where she held several positions from R&D scientist, contributing to new products, to R&D and business leadership positions in the food and beverages B2B space. In the second half of her career, she held positions as Business Director for Bioprocessing Ingredients for several markets (beverages, fats & oils) and later as Commercial Director for the Nutritional Ingredients portfolio for the Food & Beverages business group.

Joana holds a Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Porto University and a PhD in Catalysis Engineering from the Delft University of Technology.

Annick joined NutriLeads in February 2018.

After a postdoctoral position at the ETH of Zurich, Annick started her career in industry at French biotechnology company, Transgène S.A., where she worked for 14 years. After this, she set up the Department of Microbiology of Ecosystems at the Institut Pasteur de Lille.

In 2002, Annick took a Group Leader position in the Nutrition and Health Department at the Nestlé Research Center in Lausanne, Switzerland. She was successively in charge of the Functional Microbiology, Allergy and Host-Microbe Interaction groups, and built and led the Gut Ecosystem department before retiring from Nestlé in January 2018.

Annick obtained her PhD in at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. She is co-inventor of more than 50 patents and authored more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications.

Ruud obtained his PhD on immunomodulation at Utrecht University and studied intestinal metabolism at Rockefeller University in New York. In 1998 he joined Unilever where he built and led the global expertise group on nutrition immunity and gut health in varying roles up to global R&D director Bioscience, Nutrition & Health Discover Platform. He initiated numerous international collaborations and is coinventor of IMPP-1. From 2007 to 2012 he chaired the ILSI-Europe taskforce on nutrition and immunity that published seminal papers on immunomodulation in humans. Since leaving Unilever in 2012, he founded Nutrileads and he acts as consultant for international ingredient, food and pharma companies.

Krishna joined NutriLeads as an early-stage researcher as part of the Sweet Cross Talk ITN network in February 2020. She will carry out research on structure-function relation of pectin derived polysaccharides at Utrecht University as her PhD.

Krishna obtained her Master’s degree in Medicinal Chemistry at the Pune University, India. Her thesis was on extraction and characterization of bioactive molecules from medicinal plants for sickle cell anaemia. She did her Bachelor’s with three majors (Biochemistry, Genetics and Biotechnology) in India as well.

Annette joined NutriLeads in March 2020 to support the team and organize all business-related activities.

Before joining NutriLeads she held various positions including that of Office Manager at CNA Reinsurance Company Ltd. and Management Assistant at Prospectory, both in Amsterdam. She was also a teacher at primary school De Mariënborn in Oosterbeek.

Annette holds an MSc in English from Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht in The Netherlands.

Sue joined NutriLeads as a translational scientist in 2021. She is responsible for the further development of scientific evidence to support the launch of NutriLeads’ health ingredients.

Previously, she worked as a Nutrition Manager for Upfield and in various R&D roles in the Nutrition & Health department of Unilever.

She studied Biopharmaceutical Sciences at Leiden University before obtaining her PhD at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her postdoctoral research at Groningen University focused on airway remodelling in asthma and at Utrecht University on the development of novel asthma therapies. 

Saskia joined NutriLeads as Manager of Production and Technology in June 2021. She is responsible for the coordination of the commercial production of BeniCaros^® by our suppliers as well as continuously improving the production process.

Saskia has gained extensive technology and operational experience during over 18-years’ employment at FrieslandCampina, where she held various roles in the ingredients business.

She was educated as a process technologist at Wageningen University and obtained her PDEng at the Technical University of Eindhoven.

Marie-José joined Nutrileads in March 2022. She is responsible for assuring that our products and processes meet our high internal standards, all relevant regulatory requirements, and exceed our customers’ expectations.

Marie-José has broad experience in quality assurance. She has worked for 10 years in the food sector at Hoogwegt and Friesland Campina, as well as in the public domain. All her roles related to quality assurance and food safety.

With a background in Food and Nutrition, Marie-José holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Groningen and a Master’s degree in Food Safety from Wageningen University & Research.

Marcela joined NutriLeads as Research Manager (Nutrition & Health) in early 2016. She is responsible for the coordination of in vitro and in vivo testing of NutriLeads’ lead ingredients as well as the initiation and coordination of clinical trials.

Marcela’s postdoctoral research at the Karolinska Institutet/AstraZeneca Integrated Cardio Metabolic Centre in Stockholm, Sweden, focused on the regulatory mechanisms implicated in the interaction between immune and metabolic cells in obesity-related diseases: insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease.

She originally trained as a molecular biologist at Leiden University and obtained her PhD at the University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands, where she studied the role of chronic inflammation in insulin resistance and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Steve started as a US representative of Nutrileads BV, in April 2022.

He began his career working in the pharmaceutical industry in an R&D capacity with Baxter International and then moved into quality management in pharmaceuticals for the next seven years. Following a relocation to Salt Lake City, Steve entered the dietary supplement and nutrition industries, where he has worked for 20 years in roles including quality assurance/control management, sales and business development.

Steve has degrees in Chemistry and Psychology from Northern Illinois University with a special emphasis in business management.