19 JUN 2024 · Welcome to Faces of Innovation! This podcast is dedicated to speaking to leaders across the innovation ecosystem, from Venture Builders to Chief Innovation Officers. Faces of Innovation is hosted by Rachel Gordon. Rachel is a growth and innovation advisor to ambitious industry leaders in consumer packaged goods and pharmaceuticals. In her 20-year career, she's led innovation initiatives across Europe and North America in-house and as a consultant. Today, she helps clients create internal structures for successful long-term innovation, enabling them to uncover market opportunities, build innovation capability and position themselves for large-scale growth. Rachel’s experience includes work with: ABInBev, AstraZeneca, Danone, General Mills, Harley-Davidson, PepsiCo and Virgin. Today we're excited to be speaking to Agathe Blanchon-Ehrsam. Agathe is VP of Plant-Based Growth Strategy and Innovation at Danone. She has had an incredible career and journey working both consultancy-side as Partner at Vivaldi, a global re-invention firm known for supporting some of the leading organizations in unlocking growth and transforming brands, through to her work today at Danone, where she focuses on growth & innovation strategy across the portfolio. Agathe has had a career that has spanned multiple types of organizations and geographies and this is an incredible episode to hear more about her approach to building a career in brand and innovation. How she has approached growth and the decisions that have led her to her role today? The journey of going from consultancy side to an in-house role? What do decisions look like from the inside and how should consultancies be working as partners to innovation leaders? And so much more. This is a fantastic episode for anyone building a career in innovation and for folks who really want to understand what decisions look like in-house when it comes to brand and innovation. There are so many insights and learnings jam packed in this episode and we hope you enjoy it!

14 MAY 2024 · Welcome to Faces of Innovation! This podcast is dedicated to speaking to leaders across the innovation ecosystem, from Venture Builders to Chief Innovation Officers. Faces of Innovation is hosted by Rachel Gordon. Rachel is a growth and innovation advisor to ambitious industry leaders in consumer packaged goods and pharmaceuticals. In her 20-year career, she's led innovation initiatives across Europe and North America in-house and as a consultant. Today, she helps clients create internal structures for successful long-term innovation, enabling them to uncover market opportunities, build innovation capability and position themselves for large-scale growth. Rachel’s experience includes work with: ABInBev, AstraZeneca, Danone, General Mills, Harley-Davidson, PepsiCo and Virgin. Today we're excited to be speaking to Heather Myers. Heather is the founder of Spark No. 9, a strategy validation firm. Heather’s passion is bringing new strategies to life and testing them in real-life, bias-free environments. With the Spark No. 9 team, Heather has developed an experimentation platform that uses powerful design and innovative targeting for multivariate testing of big ideas. By using ad platforms and other real-life forums for testing, Spark generates evidence to de-risk new product development, rebrands, and other strategic initiatives. Heather is a strategic advisor to The Luupe, a platform for creators; Pluralytics, an AI-powered platform that customizes language to audience; and GOLD, an online comedy platform. She is also the president of the Harvard Business School Women’s Association. Prior to founding Spark, Heather led corporate strategy and development for Scholastic, a leader in K-12 educational technology and children’s book publishing. Before joining Scholastic, Heather managed the $12 billion merger of Polygram and Universal and created a digital music division for the Universal Music Group; she also led strategy and business development efforts for Universal Studios’ television, motion picture, theme park, and music businesses. Heather holds a BA in English from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. This is a fantastic episode for anyone working in Innovation!

14 FEB 2024 · Welcome to Faces of Innovation! This podcast is dedicated to speaking to leaders across the innovation ecosystem, from Venture Builders to Chief Innovation Officers. Faces of Innovation is hosted by Rachel Gordon. Rachel is a growth and innovation advisor to ambitious industry leaders in consumer packaged goods and pharmaceuticals. In her 20-year career, she's led innovation initiatives across Europe and North America in-house and as a consultant. Today, she helps clients create internal structures for successful long-term innovation, enabling them to uncover market opportunities, build innovation capability and position themselves for large-scale growth. Rachel’s experience includes work with: ABInBev, AstraZeneca, Danone, General Mills, Harley-Davidson, PepsiCo and Virgin. For episode 1 we're excited to be speaking to Ron J. Williams. Ron helps bold companies identify and de-risk "good growth" engines: High potential opportunities that are unapologetically impactful and unequivocally commercial. He is an Inclusive venture builder supporting overlooked founders and problem spaces. Ron has founded, built, invested in and advised on peer-to-peer, sharing economy, marketplace, machine learning and social commerce companies. In varied roles as a founder, intrapreneur, consultant, Entrepreneur in Residence and Program Lead, he has helped Fortune 500 companies re-engineer core business strategies and innovation programs across industries. This is a fantastic episode for anyone working in Innovation, Venture Building and Studios, Venture Capital, and Startups.