Sharon Finegan was appointed in April 2021 as Director of the Office of Environmental Sustainability in the EPA. Prior to joining the EPA she was Head of the Climate Action Unit in the Department of the Taoiseach. Prior to this she was Secretary to the Citizens’ Assembly from 2016-2018. She has spent the majority of her career working in the Department of the Taoiseach where she has held a number of roles including Head of Protocol and Head of Economic Policy. She holds a BA from NUI, Galway and an MSc from Trinity College Dublin.

Odile Le Bolloch is a scientist at the Environmental Protection Agency, with over 20 years’ experience working on sustainability and environmental issues.

She leads the Food Waste Prevention team and specialises in developing and delivering initiatives to promote food waste prevention and encourage behaviour change in homes, and businesses across Ireland, including the successful Stop Food Waste programme.

Focused on behavioural insights, communications and stakeholder engagement, Odile is passionate about working collaboratively to increase the understanding of food waste prevention, to inspire change and to enable the adoption of the behaviours necessary to deliver a 50% reduction in Ireland’s food waste by 2030.

She previously worked with Trinity College Dublin, the Italian National Research Council (CNR), and Irish eNGO Birdwatch Ireland before joining the EPA in 1999.

Odile is also a regular media commentator on the issue of food waste and waste prevention, appearing on Irish television, radio and in print media.

Helen is a scientific officer at the EPA. She is a member of the Food Waste Prevention Team and is focused on developing and implementing food waste prevention awareness initiatives and campaigns for the business sector.

She also works on gathering and publishing quality data on food waste across the whole supply chain.

Helen has worked in the EPA for over 13 years and before joining the food waste team in 2019 worked on the Waste Statistics team where she had responsibility for the national waste characterisation study and also reported on waste statistics for Producer Responsibility Initiative Directives

Dr Jennifer Attard is a Research Project Manager with the Circular Bioeconomy Research Group. She currently works on the H2020 project agroBRIDGES, empowering farmers through Short Food Supply Chains, and on a Socio-economic Study of Seaweed Harvesting in Ireland funded by the Marine Institute. She was previously a Principal Investigator on the EPA-funded Efficient Food project; quantifying and understanding national food loss and waste from primary production in Ireland, as well as a Researcher on the BBI-JU project ICT-BIOCHAIN: Digitising Ireland’s Bioeconomy to improve the efficiency and competitiveness of biomass supply chains. Dr Attard received her BSc (Hons) in Chemistry with Materials from the University of Malta and her PhD in Chemistry from the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence at the University of York.

Toine Timmermans is program manager Circular Economy in Food at Wageningen University & Research. And the managing Director of the foundation Food Waste Free United, the National private-public partnership in the Netherlands, www.foodwastefreeunited.com coordinated both EU projects FUSIONS and REFRESH, focusing on innovation and research in food waste prevention at EU-level. www.eu-refresh.org He is member of the EC-Food Loss and Food Waste platform and Non-Executive Director at the Board of the Fight Food Waste CRC in Australia.

Responsibilities include - 

• Product Quality, Safety & Legality
• Sites Standards
• Supply Chain Product Quality and Risk management
• Keelings Responsible Business Programme
• Facilities Management

I am an environmental chemist who has worked with CTC for 20 years. I have been working on food waste since starting the Stop Food Waste programme with the EPA in 2009 and since then have worked on the topic with industry, the waste sector, local authorities, communities and householders. Having completed detailed research on food waste arising from the commercial sector I am currently working with the EPA on developing a food waste measurement method for Irish businesses.

Martin Hofler is Bord Bia’s Sustainable Partnership and Development Manager. In this role Martin is responsible for designing services to support food and drink companies with their corporate sustainability strategies and programmes; services include provision of sustainability topic guidance documents, training workshops and sustainability target planning. The development of these services is delivered in active collaboration with NGOs, academic institutions and state agencies. Prior to his current role, Martin has previously worked in a number of sustainability roles with PepsiCo U.S., Ornua Deutschland (Kerrygold) and Jacobs Engineering.

Martin holds a MSc. in Business Sustainability from UCD Smurfit, MSc. in Environmental Science from Trinity College Dublin, a BSc. in Environmental Science from the University of Scranton and a Diploma in Strategic Project & Programme Management from the Institute of Project Management Ireland.

Sebastien is passionate about food and consumers. That is why he has been working with Danone for over 19 years in the Quality function, mainly with the dairies business. From supplier management to consumer service, he has held many positions throughout the supply chain and always with the same passion: doing what is right for consumers and for Danone. Currently, he is leading the Quality and Food Safety team for Danone UK and Ireland across the full product portfolio which includes dairy, waters and beverages, baby food and medical nutrition products.