Food Executive ProgramJuly 7-12, 2024 in Ithaca, NY

Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with technology, media and marketing, and the creator of the popular, free online course, Generative AI for Execs. Named LinkedIn’s “Top Voice in Technology,” he covers tech and business for Fox 5’s Good Day New York, and is a regular commentator on CNN and CNBC. He hosts the Shelly Palmer LIVE livestream.

Shelly is a prolific author. Along with his daily newsletter, his books include, the Amazon #1 Bestseller, Blockchain – Cryptocurrency, NFTs & Smart Contracts: An executive guide to the world of decentralized finance and Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV, the seminal book about the technological, economic, and sociological forces that have changing everything about the the business of television, Overcoming the Digital Divide: How to use Social Media and Digital Tools to Reinvent Yourself and Your Career, and Digital Wisdom: Thought Leadership for a Connected World.

Chastity Prince McLeod is currently the Vice President of Sustainability for Zone North America. She is a Clemson University graduate and has been with Nestlé for over 19 years, starting as a Packaging Engineer in Ohio and later supporting new packaging development in Germany. She has held various roles within Nestlé, including R&D Packaging Group Manager for Frozen and Chilled globally and managing new product development for Pizza and Snacking products. In 2019, she became the Director of Technical Packaging for Nestle USA, responsible for packaging innovation, renovation, and sustainability across 7 US businesses. In 2022, she was promoted to VP of Sustainability for Nestle USA, and in 2023, she became the VP of Sustainability for Z-NA where she is responsible for sustainability across Operations, Sourcing, Packaging and Brand/Retailer. Chastity believes in the personal power of people and creating an environment where their greatest potential can be unlocked. She is married with a son and resides in Ohio.

Gordon Reid serves as President of Stop & Shop, a great local brand of Ahold Delhaize USA. Founded in 1914, Stop & Shop now has more than 400 stores across the Northeast and employs nearly 54,000 associates.

Prior to joining Stop & Shop in 2019, Gordon Reid served as President of Giant Food and led the brand to the number one market share position in each of its local markets. Under his leadership, the company made healthy eating easier and affordable, while also growing home delivery and transforming the shopping experience with the customer top of mind.

Reid has more than 35 years of international retail experience. Before joining Giant Food, he worked as CEO of China and Deputy Regional Director of North Asia for The Dairy Farm Group in Hong Kong. Previously, he spent time at Tesco in various leadership roles and worked in a variety of countries such as Hungary, India and China. He also previously worked at Boots in the United Kingdom for 15 years, where he held general management roles, and at A.S. Watson Group spending time in Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea. He started his career as a pharmacist in 1984.

Reid holds a bachelor’s of science in pharmacy from Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh, U.K., and a Master’s of Business Administration from Nottingham University Business School in the U.K. He serves on the Board of Directors at the Greater Boston Food Bank and Partnership for a Healthier America. Reid also serves on the National Academy of Sciences’ Roundtable for Obesity Solutions representing Stop & Shop, which was the first-ever grocery retailer to join this group in their work to address the obesity crisis. Gordon and his wife reside in Boston, Mass.

Sara Wheeler is the VP of Commercial Development for Nestlé USA. Sara has a 25+ year career at Nestlé holding numerous sales roles across several businesses within Nestlé including PetCare, PowerBar, Nutrition, Confections, and Beverages. Sara also spent a year working on the PetCare business for Nestlé Korea. Her most previous role was Vice President/General Manager for Sweet Earth, a business within Nestlé USA. In this role, she worked to bring this recent Nestlé acquisition to scale and capture the opportunity in the dynamic space of plant-based foods to drive long-term, profitable growth for the category. Sara’s focus is working with customers to drive long-term category growth and helping us better serve consumers in their lives. Within Nestlé, Sara is passionate about strength in culture to help achieve our best performance as an organization. Sara is originally from Central New York and ‘home’ is Seneca Lake. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Communication from Cornell University, 1995. While at Cornell, Sara was the Captain of the Alpine Ski Team for three of her four years. She was a USCSA All-American ski racer.

Sara and her family currently live in McLean, VA. She’s married with three awesome kids: Neve and Flora, 11, and Ben, 14. They love to ski, ride bikes, and spend as much time outdoors as possible. Sara’s mid-life crisis is cross-country mountain bike racing in classic weekend warrior style.

Suzanne has more than 10+ years of experience with Albertsons in executive leadership roles. She currently serves as Albertson’s Chief Sustainability and Transformation Officer​. Suzanne’s current responsibilities are to lead Albertsons Companies’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategy and the company’s transformation plan to deliver $1B+ in productivity improvement over the next three years.​

Prior to taking the lead as Albertsons Chief Sustainability Officer, Suzanne served as Albertsons GVP of Strategic Sourcing & ESG where she designed, built and led a 200-person organization responsible for optimizing sourcing of indirect/not for resale (NFR) spend, as well as the packaging, ingredients, commodity and co-packer costs for a $9B Own Brands portfolio. Suzanne has twice won Progressive Grocer’s Top Women in Grocery award – Senior Executive Level (2019 & 2021) & the Tribute to Women and Industry (TWIN) Award​. She earned her Bachelor’s degree from Duke University

David Azevedo Lopes is the former CEO of Recheio Cash & Carry, the administrator of Parque Expo (Portuguese State Company), and the president of the International Department of Daymon, based in the USA, where he was responsible for a network in 23 countries. He also served as the administrator and CEO of the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation and as the executive administrator of the Lisbon Aquarium.

Currently, David is the Vice-Chairman of Vershold Integrated Supply Chain Solutions, and the Lisbon City Council Head of Mission for the World Youth Day.

Peter works in Strategic Partnership Acceleration at Ascential Digital Commerce. Prior to Ascential, Peter was the Senior Vice President of Commercial Strategy & Business Development at Fetch Rewards, a mobile loyalty platform. Peter has also held leadership roles at PowerReviews, CVS Health, dunnhumby, IRi and priceline.com. He holds a BA from Wesleyan University, a MBA from The Stern School of Business at New York University and Executive Education Certificates from the Business Schools at Columbia University and Cornell University.

Sri Rajagopalan has over 30 years of leadership experience at Fortune 500 companies, overseeing eCommerce and P&L for some of the most recognizable CPG brands in the world.
He has worked as Senior Vice President of eCommerce & Digital Sales at Revlon, Vice President of eCommerce & New Business Models at Johnson & Johnson, and General Manager of Sales & eCommerce at PepsiCo.

Ken Blanchard, one of the most influential leadership experts in the world, is the co-author of the iconic best sellers “The One Minute Manager” and “The New One Minute Manager,” as well as 65 other books whose combined sales total more than 23 million copies. His groundbreaking works have been translated into more than 47 languages. In 2005 he was inducted into Amazon’s Hall of Fame as one of the top 25 best-selling authors of all time.
He is the co-founder, with his wife, Margie, of The Ken Blanchard Companies®, an international management training and consulting firm in San Diego, California. He also co-founded Lead Like Jesus, a worldwide organization committed to helping people become servant leaders.

Ken has received numerous awards and honors for his contributions in the fields of management, leadership, and speaking. The National Speakers Association awarded him its highest honor, the Council of Peers Award of Excellence. He was inducted into the HRD Hall of Fame by Training magazine and he received the Golden Gavel Award from Toastmasters International. Ken also received the Thought Leadership Award from ISA – The Association of Learning Providers.
When he’s not writing or speaking, Ken teaches students in the Master of Science in Executive Leadership Program at the University of San Diego. Born in New Jersey and raised in New York, Ken received an M.A. degree from Colgate University and a B.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University.

Dan Hooker is a global retail and consumer packaged goods executive with broad experience across diverse business environments and formats, leading traditional food retail operations and merchandising, as well as product development, consumer and category analytics, sourcing and procurement, global trading, national sales, and ecommerce. An outstanding strategist and general manager, he has led the successful startup of multiple diverse businesses. Known for and recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on retailers’ proprietary brands, Mr. Hooker has shaped clients’ programs across four continents and eight classes of trade. His passion is in helping companies recognize their unique DNA and positioning then creating actionable marketing and sales strategies essential for their success.

Dr. Ana C. Krieger is an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine in the Departments of Medicine, Neurology, and Genetic Medicine. She holds board certifications in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary Disease, and Sleep Medicine, and is a faculty member in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Medicine, at Weill Cornell Medical College as well as an Associate Attending at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center and at Rockefeller University Hospital.

Over the past 20 years, Dr. Krieger has been actively involved in patient care, training of sleep specialists, and sleep medicine education. Besides her clinical activities, Dr. Krieger works in research projects as a clinician scientist, investigating the mechanisms of cardiovascular disease and thrombosis in sleep apnea, and helping with the development of new technologies for sleep monitoring and education.

Miguel I. Gómez is the Robert G. Tobin Associate Professor in the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University. He is Director of the Food Industry Management Program, globally recognized as the premier food industry education and research program. Professor Gómez has an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Applied Economics from the University of Illinois.

Professor Gómez concentrates his research program on two interrelated areas under the umbrella of food marketing and distribution. The first is Food Value Chain Competitiveness and Sustainability. His work in this area involves multidisciplinary collaborations for the development models to assess supply chain performance in multiple dimensions, including economic, social, and environmental. The second is Food Value Chain Negotiation. Here Professor Gómez combines theory and outreach methods to analyze food markets from farm to table, emphasizing key concepts such as demand response, consumer behavior, buyer/seller negotiations, market power, and retail performance. In addition, his research extends to economic development and environmental economics, examining incentives and barriers of smallholder farmer participation in food value chains and sustainability of food systems, with emphasis in Latin America. Professor Gómez’s applied research efforts aim at enhancing market opportunities for fruit and vegetable products, benefiting producers, food processors/distributors, and consumers worldwide.

Professor Gómez’s work has been published in top journals, including Science, Management Science, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, World Development, and Food Policy. His research program has been funded with over 100 research grants, including the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Professor Gómez has won several prestigious teaching and research awards, including the Rising Star Faculty Award of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University. He has consulted for multilateral development institutions such as the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the Interamerican Development Bank.

Vishal Gaur is the Anne and Elmer Lindseth Dean and Emerson Professor of Manufacturing Management at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management in the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. Gaur earned his PhD from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania (2001), MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (1995), and BTech in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (1993).

As associate dean for MBA programs from 2014 to 2019, Gaur launched the Digital Technology Immersion, in which MBA candidates and students earning their MPS in data science or applied statistics develop skills in coding, databases, and advanced analytics, and learn to leverage them to tackle challenges faced by leading companies.

He also created and served as the program director for the Master of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA) program offered through eCornell, which provides working professionals a hands-on opportunity to learn about data analytics tools essential to analyzing and optimizing business decisions.

Gaur’s research focuses on data-driven analysis of problems in supply chains, retailing, e-commerce, and marketplace operations, and his work was recognized with the Wickham Skinner Early Career Research Accomplishments Award from the Production and Operations Management Society in 2006. He served as a department editor for Management Science during 2014-2021, and his current projects involve the reduction of food waste and supply chain risk. He teaches graduate courses in operations management, digital business and retail operations, and data analysis.

Gaur is the 2022 recipient of the Class of 1992 Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching, the 2020 recipient of the Stephen Russell Distinguished Teaching Award, and a three-time winner of the Johnson School’s Core Faculty Award, the Cornell-Tsinghua Dual Degree MBA Gravitas Award in 2021, the Johnson Cornell Tech Core Faculty Award by the graduating class of 2017, and honorable mention in the George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award Competition in 2001.

Well-known among students for the care and attention he gives to his teaching, he currently teaches the Semester in Strategic Operations MBA immersion course, where students go on site visits and work on client projects in topics such as industry 4.0, traceability, and sales and operations planning.

Before joining Johnson, he was an assistant professor at the NYU Stern School of Business from 2001 to 2007 and a visiting associate professor at Harvard Business School from 2007 to 2008.

Dr. Li Chen is a Professor of Operations, Technology and Information Management and Breazzano Family Term Professor of Management at Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. Dr. Chen’s research interests concern supply chain management, operations strategy, and Bayesian methods for predictive and prescriptive analytics. He has published research works in top journals in the operations management field, such as Management Science, Operations Research, and Manufacturing, Service and Operations Management. Prior to joining Johnson School, Dr. Chen was an Associate Professor of Business Administration at The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. Before his Duke appointment, Dr. Chen spent four years at TrueDemand Software, a supply chain software company in Silicon Valley, where he was the cofounder and lead scientist of the company. Dr. Chen obtained his PhD in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University in 2005.

Mark Milstein is Clinical Professor of Management and Director of the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University. He conducts applied research in and oversees the Center’s work on market and enterprise creation, business development, clean technology commercialization, and sustainable finance.

Dr. Milstein specializes in framing the world’s social and environmental challenges as unmet market needs which can be addressed effectively by the private sector through innovation and entrepreneurship, thereby allowing companies to achieve financial success by creatively addressing problems such as climate change, ecosystem degradation, and poverty. He has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation the S.C. Johnson Foundation, SEvEN, the World Bank, the University of Queensland, and the Water Resources Institute. Over the past decade, Dr. Milstein has worked with more than 100 firms across a range of industries, including renewable energy and carbon markets, life sciences and sustainable agriculture, consumables, food and nutrition, healthcare, tourism and hospitality management, as well as finance and international development.

Dr. Milstein’s work and perspectives have been featured in The New York Times, MSNBC, CNBC, Forbes, The Guardian, and GreenBiz. He is a frequent speaker on the topics of strategy, organizational change, and innovation related to business and sustainability. He also consults with a number of multinational firms, small- and medium-sized enterprises, and NGOs. Dr. Milstein currently serves on the board of directors of Livelihood Basix International and as a board member for Johnson & Johnson’s Earthwards Program.

Michael J. Hostetler is a faculty member of the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. Mr. Hostetler’s main research and teaching interests are in strategy, decision-making, leadership, high performance teams, innovation and change management. He has taught classes in the MBA program, Executive MBA program and the Cornell-Queen’s EMBA program, as well as many non-degree executive education programs.

Mr. Hostetler also consults with private and non-profit organizations, both domestically and internationally. In particular, he works frequently in the health care, financial services, manufacturing and food industries. Recent clients include the Lehigh Valley Health Network, the Community Health Foundation of Buffalo, New York, the P2 Collaborative of Western New York, Northern Trust, Schwan’s, LG, United Technologies, Driscoll’s, Philip Morris International, Citigroup, Victaulic Co., Anthony Marano Co., Nunasi Corp., Ahold Delhaize, Sun World International, Samsung, LG, Sony, NACS, United Fresh, Vantage Foods, OSRAM, Baldor, NGA, and SG Cowen. Mr. Hostetler has also designed and taught a number of executive development programs and strategy consulting projects globally, including the U. S., Great Britain, Holland, Canada, France, Germany, Austria, Brazil, Venezuela, Philippines, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, China, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, India, Dubai, and Egypt.

William Drake recently retired From Cornell, where he was Senior Extension Associate, faculty member, and Director of Executive Education of the Food Industry Management Program (FIMP) in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management.

Bill developed and continues to direct the National Association of Convenience Stores Executive Leadership Program and the National Grocers Association Executive Leadership Program. In addition, he teaches in the Food Executive Program, United Fresh Produce Executive Development Program, and FIMP’s various international food executive programs. Bill has conducted programs for food industry executives from over 30 countries.

Before joining Cornell, Bill was an executive at SuperValu, one of the nation’s largest food retailers and wholesalers. His positions included Vice President of Marketing and Real Estate (Cub Foods); Vice President of Strategic Planning, Key Wholesale Customers (SuperValu corporate); and Vice President of Strategic Planning, Marketing, and Real Estate (Save-A-Lot).

Bill is a founding member of the National Grocers Association University Coalition and also serves on the Boards of Directors of LEADNY; Coborn’s, a large regional multi-format food retailer in the Upper Midwest; and Vantage Foods, a Canadian supplier of case-ready meat to North American retailers.

Adam Brumberg splits his time between consumer behavior research and the food industry management program. He runs student programs, co-teaches “Supply Chain Strategy,” and is an active leader in executive education programs.

Ed McLaughlin is the Robert G. Tobin Professor of Marketing Emeritus at the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. He served as interim dean of Dyson from July 2020 to July 2021 and from June 2016 to June 2017. McLaughlin directed Dyson’s undergraduate business program, the largest undergraduate major at Cornell, for 20 years. He also served as the faculty director of the Food Executive Program (now in its 56th year) and directed Cornell’s Food Industry Management Program. He is a distinguished expert in the efficiency of food distribution systems who has worked with food industry companies, trade associations, and public policymakers over many decades.