Tell us about your journey and how you ended up at FoodFacts?

I’m French but have been living abroad for most of my life, in Europe but also North Africa, South America and Asia - and now I’ve been in Sweden for 14 years. I started my career as a management consultant. I’ve worked in many sectors, from FMCG to retail and transport, mostly in France and Spain. When I came to Sweden I worked in a cosmetics company in global positions in Business Development, Marketing and Communication.

After almost 20 years in a corporate career, I realized the importance of working for companies and projects with an impact-driven mission, especially when linked to sustainability. I felt like I didn’t know enough about it and decided to study sustainability linked to business. I studied at both Hyper Island with a focus on sustainability, digitalization and business development and at a French university where I took a course called Master Class Sustainable Leadership, focusing on sustainability leadership and getting companies on a sustainability trajectory. During this time I also worked as a consultant for a few tech companies.

At the end of 2021, I met up with one of FoodFact's co-founders, whom I had worked with in the past and I got really interested in what they were building. It felt like a perfect alignment of stars: a start-up tech company with a very strong mission on health and sustainability and an impact-driven founding team. I joined FoodFacts as CEO in April 2022.

Why are you excited to be at FoodFacts now? 

Food is a massive challenge, both for the health of humans and our planet. Our food system is responsible for 30% of carbon emissions globally and is also the number one cause of biodiversity loss. Also if you look at global health, 35% of adults are overweight today and ⅔ of deaths caused by heart disease could have been avoided by a better diet.

I want to ultimately empower people to make better food choices. Imagine if one billion people knew how to choose better food. What an impact that could have! 

That's FoodFacts mission and I am thrilled to be a part of it.

How can food data enable better food choices and transparency?

People want to make better choices but unfortunately today they lack the information to do so. It's too much information out there or not always the right one. It’s either too complex or too scattered. I believe sharing understandable, accessible and actionable food data is the key to empowering consumers to make better food choices, both for their health and the planet. 

Who influences better food choices?

All companies working with food can influence better food choices. Retailers, distributors, food producers, and food influencers. But also health organizations, coaches, nutritionists, and educators. This is why we at FoodFacts believe in working B2B across the whole food ecosystem to empower companies to influence better food choices with the best and most relevant data. 

What food fact do you think everyone should know?

I actually like Nutriscore a lot. It’s an easy health scoring system used in many European countries to easily guide consumers in their choice. It is a scale from A to E, color-coded, which tells you a glimpse of how good or bad a food product is for your health. It is a very powerful nudging tool, and it is very actionable by the consumer, helping quickly at the moment of choice.

Do you want to get in contact with Alexandra and talk more about intelligent food data? Reach out to her at alexandra@foodfacts.se.