New year, new job... Coca-Cola and Brown-Forman are among the companies welcoming new faces to top jobs.
Coca-Cola and Brown-Forman are among the companies welcoming new faces to top jobs.
Brown-Forman Corporation’s Marshall Farrer – who is President, Europe - is expanding his leadership responsibilities and becoming Executive Vice President, Chief Strategic Growth Officer, effective January 1, 2023.
In addition to stewarding Brown-Forman’s European business, Farrer, in his new role as Chief Strategic Growth Officer, will work closely with Lawson Whiting, President and CEO, and the entire Brown-Forman Executive Leadership Team, on developing key partnerships and new growth opportunities to achieve the company’s short-term objectives and long-term ambitions.
Brown-Forman says Farrer’s understanding of consumers, coupled with 24 years in the global spirits industry, will help the company unlock new pathways for growth.
Farrer has served on the Executive Leadership Team since 2020. In his role as President, Europe, he leads Brown-Forman’s operations in the owned distribution markets of the UK, Germany, France, Poland, Spain, Czechia, Belgium, and Luxembourg as well as the remaining developed markets in Europe utilizing partners for distribution. He is also a member of the Brown-Forman Board of Directors, joining in 2016, and a fifth-generation Brown family shareholder.
Farrer is based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He serves as an executive sponsor for SEED, Brown-Forman’s first employee resource group established outside of the US, which endeavors to challenge stereotypes as well as inspire, empower, and educate employees about the unique experiences of different racial groups and ethnicities.
Wine agency Fine Wines Direct UK has welcomed two new faces to its sales team: having set out investment in the division as a priority for 2023.
Neil Cammies is the former wine columnist at Media Wales and presented wines on BBC Radio Wales. He has also judged at the Great Taste Awards and appeared on Great British Menu and Street Market Chefs.
After 30 years he left his career in the press to join the sales team at Fine Wines Direct UK in Cardiff, where he conducts wine tastings and events, designs wine lists and hosts staff training for clients, as well as promoting the extensive Fine Wines Direct UK portfolio.
Hayley Clare joins the Fine Wines Direct Sales Team as National Account Manager and will be responsible for the on-trade channel focusing on wholesalers, Hotel Groups, Pub Groups and Restaurant Groups.
Clare has extensive experience in the hospitality sector, having trained and worked with Whitbread Plc for five years which was followed by several years in on trade management. Clare also spent several years in the pharmaceutical’s industry as a business development manager before joining FWDUK where she will combine both her extensive sales background and understanding of the hospitality industry.
The Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment has announced two Board appointments.
Eija Hietavuo, Tetra Pak has been elected President replacing Marcelle Reichert, SIG Combibloc. Henna Liirus, Stora Enso, has been elected as Vice President replacing Håkan Pettersson, Billerud.
Hietavuo and Liirus have been elected for a two-year term, with the possibility of a onetime reelection. The ACE Board is composed of a total of five representatives from the membership.
The ACE – whose members also include SIG Combibloc, Elopak and Billerud – is a platform for beverage carton manufacturers and paperboard suppliers to ‘benchmark and profile beverage cartons as a safe, circular and sustainable packaging solution with low carbon benefits’.
Clearmind Medicine, an Israeli biotech focused on discovery and development of novel psychedelic-derived therapeutics, has appointed Nicholas Kadysh as special advisor for the development of MEAI as an alcohol substitute.
Kadysh, a former executive at Red Bull Canada and Juul Labs Canada, is a career expert on navigating complex regulatory challenges in the health and food industry. He is the founder of PharmAla Biotech, which manufactures MDMA- and MDXX-class molecules for pharmaceutical research, and the Board Chair of Psychedelics Canada, the trade association for the for-profit, legal Canadian psychedelics industry.
In parallel to developing its innovative novel psychedelic-derived drug candidate MEAI for treating addictions, Clearmind is also building a parallel track in which MEAI is deployed as an alcohol substitute. The company is currently preforming the safety studies for this.
Luisa Ortega will become president of The Coca-Cola Company's Africa operating unit, overseeing markets across the continent.
Ortega currently serves as president of the company’s central zone in Latin America, which includes Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Central America and the Caribbean.
Ortega replaces Bruno Pietracci, who has been named president of Coca-Cola’s Latin America operating unit. Both changes take effect Feb. 1, 2023. Ortega will relocate to Johannesburg in 2023.
Ortega and Pietracci will report to Henrique Braun, who becomes President, International Development, for Coca-Cola this month.
Ortega, a native of Spain, joined Coca-Cola in 2019 as vice president and general manager of the South Latin business unit. She was later named deputy president and then president of South Latin. In 2021, she became president of the newly created central zone of the Latin America operating unit. She also serves as chair of the company’s Global Women's Leadership Council.
Prior to Coca-Cola, Ortega worked at SC Johnson for more than 14 years in various roles in Europe, the United States and the Asia Pacific region. She also worked at Endesa, a utility corporation that serves mainly Spain and Portugal.
Ortega has a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Universidad Pontificia Comillas and an MBA from the IESE Business School, both in Spain, along with participating in the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.
