WHY ATTEND?
Demands for new innovation within healthy aging and proactive nutrition are reaching an all-time high. More investment and research is filling the industry and yet this needs to be captured and scaled for consumers to access healthy aging nutrition products.
Introducing the Healthy Aging and Proactive Nutrition Summit (December 5-6, San Diego): encompassing preventative and prescriptive approaches to increasing health-span and longevity in a world dominated by financial, physiological and lifestyle stressors with the aim of enabling partnerships throughout the industry.
The Summit will bring together innovative start-ups, multinational and independent brands, investors, retailers and ingredient suppliers engaged in nutritional products for healthy aging to solve the challenges with producing and promoting innovative products.
Join us to:
- Benchmark against peers, define your strategic priorities and discover the key attributes investors value most
- Uncover disruptive start-ups and independent brands to drive partnerships and be at the forefront of investment opportunities
- Spark innovation and facilitate brand development by gaining valuable market insights from our best-in-class speaker faculty
KEY STATISTICS
INNOVATION SHOWCASE
Our Innovation Showcase will highlight some of the most unique and innovative start-ups within healthy aging and proactive nutrition. Applicants can relate to any aspect of functional foods and beverages, vitamins, supplements, technology, and ingredients for healthy aging.
Five finalists, selected by our esteemed Selection Committee, will receive the opportunity to present in front of our audience of industry leaders and investors, displaying their company achievements, research and vision. We will then proceed with a live Q&A from both our Selection Committee and audience.
Following the pitching session, audience members have the chance to select their favorite start-up in a live vote, in order to crown the Healthy Aging and Proactive Nutrition Summit 'Best in Show Winner'.
Please note, you must be a registered attendee to apply for the showcase.
Applications close on Friday, October 13.
SELECTION COMMITTEE

Arpesh Mehta

Holly Jackson

Lindsay McCorkle
Lindsay is a Director at Blue Horizon, a fund focused on sustainable food systems. She is responsible for North American deals across the food and ag sectors, ranging from seed to pre-IPO. Prior to Blue Horizon, she worked at Rabobank where she developed early stage agrifoodtech coverage for the research and investing teams. Previously, Lindsay worked in private equity at MacAndrews & Forbes and as an M&A banker at Moelis & Company. She has worked as competitive pastry chef for the last 15 years.

Susan Roddy
Ms. Roddy is a senior member of Houlihan Lokey’s Consumer, Food & Retail Group, leading the firm’s Consumer Health and Personal Care practice. Her focus areas include health & wellness and personal care, including women’s health and intimacy, healthy aging and mom & baby.
Ms. Roddy has nearly two decades of corporate finance experience, with a particular passion for advising high-growth consumer brands. Her recent work includes the sales of Zesty Paws to H&H Group, Nuun to Nestlé Health Science, SmartyPants to Unilever, Care/of to Bayer, and Zarbee’s to Johnson & Johnson. She also has significant expertise in corporate carve-outs and divestitures, as well as contract manufacturing and private label across sectors.
Before joining Houlihan Lokey, Ms. Roddy worked in Corporate Strategy & Development at PepsiCo, where she led deal execution in Europe and was responsible for executing the company’s strategy to expand into good-for-you and better-for-you food & beverage categories. Prior to that, she worked in Investment Banking for Deutsche Bank and as an accountant for Ernst & Young.
Ms. Roddy holds a B.S. in Accounting from Bucknell University and an MBA from the Darden School at the University of Virginia. She was previously a Certified Public Accountant in the state of Pennsylvania (expired).

Steven Gwozdz
Steve is an angel investor supporting and advising emerging companies in health and wellness, consumer finance, and consumer services. He is a cornerstone investor in the Nutrition Capital Network, where he serves on the selection committee for their capital introduction events. Early in his career, Steve was an early member of the team driving the growth at Nantucket Nectars, a better-for-you beverage start up which realized a successful exit to a strategic. Steve has since built a career advising institutional asset managers on their public equity investments in emerging and developed markets across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America.
Steve earned his Bachelor of Arts from Boston College and his MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

Alison Minter
2023 SPEAKERS

Arpesh Mehta

Bodi Zhang
Dr. Bodi Zhang currently serves Chief Strategy Officer of Thorne HealthTech. Previously, Dr. Bodi Zhang has served as Chief Science Officer for Onegevity Health, LLC from January 2018 until its merger with our company in March 2021. Prior to his current role, Dr. Zhang served as Vice President, Corporate and Medical Strategy from January 2015 to 2018, and as General Manager, Strategic Alliance from January 2013 to 2015. Prior to joining our company, Dr. Zhang worked at Deallus Group, a global healthcare consultancy. Prior to the Deallus Group, Dr. Zhang was a Research Assistant Professor of Pharmacology at Tufts University, Boston. As a scientist, Bodi’s research focused on autoimmune diseases and published top-tier research publications, including in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology and Nature Reviews. Dr. Zhang holds a Ph.D in Pharmacology and Biochemistry from Tufts University, Boston, an M.P.H in healthcare management from Harvard University, Boston and a M.D. from Peking University, China.

Evan Berk

Courtney Stanton

Eva Hurt

Dondeena Bradley

Laura Kunces
Dr. Laura Kunces currently serves as VP of Medical Strategy of Thorne HealthTech. Previously, Laura served as SVP of Strategic Marketing for Onegevity Health, LLC from March 2019 until its merger with Thorne in March 2021. Before Onegevity, Laura was the Director of Medical Affairs and Clinical Research at Thorne, The Director of Nutrition Research at Arla Foods, and the Director of Research at EXOS, and an Assistant Professor at Central Connecticut State University. Laura earned her PhD from the nationally top-ranked Kinesiology Department at the University of Connecticut with a focus in nutrition. Laura holds two Master’s Degrees, one in Exercise Physiology from the University of Connecticut and one in Clinical Nutrition from the University of Memphis. Her undergraduate Bachelor of Science is in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Connecticut, where she was also a four-year D1 collegiate swimmer. She has been a registered dietitian for 15 years. Her expertise is in sports nutrition, clinical nutrition, personalized wellness, and metabolism research and communications.

Monica Feldman

Holly Jackson

Dean Kelly

Jin-Xiong She

Tom Weldon
Tom has 35 years of senior management experience, primarily in the medical device industry, both early stage and public companies. He is a well-known entrepreneur and venture capitalist and holds nearly two dozen patents. He has founded over a dozen companies, which in total have created over $2 billion in shareholder value. He was also the co-founder and Chairman of a top quartile venture fund, Accuitive Medical Ventures, which raised a total of $230 million across two funds, and is now fully invested. Tom is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Ponce de Leon Health (PDLH), a company with a mission to extend the length and quality of human life. PDLH is the world leading longevity company, and the only company to have demonstrated both safety and efficacy in humans with its product. The company has launched Rejuvant, a once-a-day pill shown to reduce biologic age, as measured by DNA methylation testing.
A recently published paper in Aging, demonstrated that subjects who took a DNAm test, then were on Rejuvant for an average of 7 months, then re-tested, had an average decrease in their biologic age of 8 years.
Tom co-founded The Innovation Factory in 1999 and served as its Chairman. Through his role at The Innovation Factory, he has co-founded AcuFocus, AqueSys, LipoSonix, Neuronetics, and Sebacia. He was a director on the RespiCardia board, prior to its sale to Zoll Medical, and was formerly the Chairman of LipoSonix, prior to its sale to Medicis.
He was previously the co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Novoste Corporation, which utilized intracoronary radiation therapy for the treatment of restenosis. Tom was Chairman and CEO of Novoste from its inception in 1992 and led the company through its initial public offering in 1996. Prior to that, Tom was the co-founder and CEO of Novoste Puerto Rico until its sale in 1992. Before founding Novoste, Tom held positions with Arthur Young & Company and Key Pharmaceuticals in various business and project management roles.
Tom received his M.B.A in Operations and Systems Management from Indiana University in 1981 and his B.S. Industrial Engineer from Purdue University in 1977. Tom has been recognized by Purdue University in 2007 by receiving the Distinguished Engineer Alumni Award, Outstanding Industrial Engineer Award in 2006, and the Burton Morgan Entrepreneurship Award in 2005. He also received the Junior Achievement ImpACT Award in 2003.
Tom’s major philanthropic focus is the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering at Purdue University, established in 2004, and the Weldon Foundation, Inc. He also serves on the advisory board for the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, the Advisory Board for the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and the National University of Singapore School of Medicine International Council.

Vineeta Singh

Emily Stein

Shelley Balanko
Shelley Balanko has an informed understanding of social and cultural influences impacting the marketplace of today and tomorrow. Shelley regularly engages diverse audiences spanning the foodservice, consumer packaged goods and retail segments as she shares leading-edge consumer insights and implications. As a member of The Hartman Group leadership team and head of business development, her focus is understanding industry challenges and needs.
Shelley graduated from the University of Windsor with a Ph.D. in Applied Social Psychology. She has a MA in Applied Social Psychology from the University of Saskatchewan and a BA in Psychology from the University of British Columbia.

Barb Stuckey
Barb has been at Mattson since 1997 and is currently Chief Innovation &
Marketing Officer at North America’s most successful independent developer of
foods and beverages for the retail food and chain restaurant industries. Barb is
known as a taste, food trend, innovation, consumer insights, and product
development expert.
As part of Barb’s role in the innovation projects that make up her daily job, she is
required to taste food and figure out how to make it better. After more than 2
decades doing this, she’s honed her tasting skills and ability to help others make
food taste better. She shared this insight with the world in 2012 when her book
Taste What You’re Missing was published. In 2013, the paperback edition was
released (under the simplified title Taste).
Barb was instrumental in helping The San Francisco Cooking School integrate
the science of taste into their curriculum. She now teaches the Fundamentals of
Taste to each entering class. Barb is also a contributor to Forbes.com where she
writes about the food industry.
Barb lives with her hypertaster husband, two artisan cats, and splits her time
between San Francisco and Healdsburg, in the heart of Sonona wine country.

Rick Weiss

Quinn Kennedy
Dr. Quinn Kennedy earned a PhD in Psychology and completed postdoctoral training in Cognitive Aging, both at Stanford University. She is the Director of Aging Research at neuroFit. Previously, Dr. Kennedy was a Research Associate Professor and Director of the Healthcare Modeling & Simulation Education Programs at the Naval Postgraduate School, where she was the recipient of the Richard Hamming Interdisciplinary Research Achievement Award. Dr. Kennedy’s 20+ years of research in adult aging has been recognized through multiple awards, grants, and peer reviewed journal publications including Psychological Science, Psychology of Aging, and Journals of Gerontology. With her collaborators, her work has been featured on Channel 2 news, NPR, The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Science. Dr. Kennedy is a popular speaker on healthy cognitive aging and is a guest contributor to Psychology Today.

Bob Messerschmidt
Bob is the Founder and CEO of Cor Health in San Diego, CA. Cor Health is developing technologies to track inflammation and the impact of lifestyle choices. We call this Self Health. Bob is formerly Director of Platform Architecture, and Watch architect. He is an Inventor & Entrepreneur with 3 exits in tech and health tech. Bob's career spans more than 25 years in the field of instrumentation for spectroscopy. He was awarded the Williams-Wright Award in 1996 for outstanding contributions to infrared spectroscopy. He is the author or co-author of 12 articles and book chapters and co-editor of one book on infrared micro-spectroscopy, holds 62 issued and pending US patents. He is past president of the Coblentz Society, past president of the Rio Grande section of the SAS, a past-president of the Southwestern Connecticut section of the Optical Society of America, and a member of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy. In his spare time he makes wine, pizza and sourdough. He and his family live in San Diego California.

Angie Kalousek Ebrahimi

Tim Gerke
Tim Gerke is a noteworthy leader of positive disruption who specializes in strategies harmonizing people, process, and technology to take organizations to the next level in growth and profitability. With a passion to drive success for all stakeholders in human and animal health, Tim loves innovating business strategies that focus on an overall proactive approach in making sustainable health a centerpiece to a better world.
Tim has over 25 years of successful execution on this mission in executive and leadership roles with Fortune 500 companies like Bayer and Deloitte, preparing him to be a dynamic change agent for small to mid-size companies hungry to strengthen their position in the marketplace. In the last decade Tim has led the repositioning, rebuilding, and turnaround of several companies who were then sold in premium transactions to private equity including FoodScience with the DaVinci, VetriScience, and Pet Naturals brands sold to Wind Point Partners, Clinics Choice as part of the VetsPlus , Inc sold to DW Healthcare Partners, and most recently rejuvenating the Allergy Research Group, Nutricology, NutriLink and Clinical Education, UK to be sold as an attractive portfolio to WM Partners. Tim has partnered with numerous companies to reorganize sales and marketing strategy and leadership development, while also consulting to update and clear regulatory hurdles for several contract manufacturers for both pharmaceutical and nutraceutical products.
Tim is a sought-after speaker for organizations, groups, associations, and non-profits because of his innovative strategies for building effective leadership and culture. Tim has facilitated hundreds of forums on critical human skills such as trust, emotional intelligence, change management, conflict resolution, and effective communication.
Tim is committed to finding the next innovations that will advance the cause of optimal health for a world in need.

Brooke Switzer
Brooke Switzer is the Director, Global Public Policy at iHerb where she delivers the strategic direction for government relations, industry affairs, and public policy. She currently leads the public policy team on a variety of U.S. and international regulatory matters across a range of topics including accessible health and nutrition, e-commerce, digital services, ESG, and cross-border trade. Brooke is an international relations and public affairs specialist with over 20 years of experience developing strategic communications and advocacy campaigns for the private sector, nonprofit foundations, and trade associations. Brooke is pursuing a doctorate of law and policy from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, and holds an MBA from Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, and Bachelors of Business Administration from John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio.

Momo Vuyisich
Momo Vuyisich, Ph.D. is the Founding CSO & Head of Clinical Research at Viome. Momo is an entrepreneur-scientist with over 25 years of R&D experience in biology, chemistry, and bioinformatics. He has led large programs, from ideas to successful commercial products.

Susan Roddy
Ms. Roddy is a senior member of Houlihan Lokey’s Consumer, Food & Retail Group, leading the firm’s Consumer Health and Personal Care practice. Her focus areas include health & wellness and personal care, including women’s health and intimacy, healthy aging and mom & baby.
Ms. Roddy has nearly two decades of corporate finance experience, with a particular passion for advising high-growth consumer brands. Her recent work includes the sales of Zesty Paws to H&H Group, Nuun to Nestlé Health Science, SmartyPants to Unilever, Care/of to Bayer, and Zarbee’s to Johnson & Johnson. She also has significant expertise in corporate carve-outs and divestitures, as well as contract manufacturing and private label across sectors.
Before joining Houlihan Lokey, Ms. Roddy worked in Corporate Strategy & Development at PepsiCo, where she led deal execution in Europe and was responsible for executing the company’s strategy to expand into good-for-you and better-for-you food & beverage categories. Prior to that, she worked in Investment Banking for Deutsche Bank and as an accountant for Ernst & Young.
Ms. Roddy holds a B.S. in Accounting from Bucknell University and an MBA from the Darden School at the University of Virginia. She was previously a Certified Public Accountant in the state of Pennsylvania (expired).

Lindsay McCorkle
Lindsay is a Director at Blue Horizon, a fund focused on sustainable food systems. She is responsible for North American deals across the food and ag sectors, ranging from seed to pre-IPO. Prior to Blue Horizon, she worked at Rabobank where she developed early stage agrifoodtech coverage for the research and investing teams. Previously, Lindsay worked in private equity at MacAndrews & Forbes and as an M&A banker at Moelis & Company. She has worked as competitive pastry chef for the last 15 years.

Nate Matsusheski

Alison Minter

Steven Gwozdz
Steve is an angel investor supporting and advising emerging companies in health and wellness, consumer finance, and consumer services. He is a cornerstone investor in the Nutrition Capital Network, where he serves on the selection committee for their capital introduction events. Early in his career, Steve was an early member of the team driving the growth at Nantucket Nectars, a better-for-you beverage start up which realized a successful exit to a strategic. Steve has since built a career advising institutional asset managers on their public equity investments in emerging and developed markets across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America.
Steve earned his Bachelor of Arts from Boston College and his MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

Barry Didato

Julia McCalmont

Dayle Sampson

Hartley Pond

Adam Sud
2023 PARTNERS
EVENT PARTNER
Bayer
Website: https://www.bayer.com/en/
Bayer is a recognized leader in the area of women’s healthcare, with a long-standing commitment to delivering science for a better life by advancing a portfolio of innovative treatments. Bayer offers a wide range of effective short- and long-acting birth control methods as well as therapies for menopause management and gynecological diseases. Bayer is also focusing on innovative options to address the unmet medical needs of women worldwide. Today, Bayer’s research and development efforts focus on finding new treatment options for menopause as well as gynecological diseases and includes several compounds in various stages of pre-clinical and clinical development. Together, these projects reflect the company’s approach to research, which prioritizes targets and pathways with the potential to alter the way that gynecological diseases are treated. Additionally, Bayer intends to provide 100 million women in low-and-middle income countries by 2030 with access to family planning by funding multi-stakeholder aid programs and by ensuring the supply of affordable modern contraceptives. This is part of the comprehensive sustainability measures and commitments from 2020 onwards and in line with the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.
MEDIA PARTNER
Cosmetics Business
Website: https://cosmeticsbusiness.com/
Through digital, live and print products, Cosmetics Business informs and inspires business leaders and decision-makers around the world. With a digital-first strategy, the Group’s Editors write breaking news, product releases, technical papers, innovation features, trend reports and live content agendas covering the entire industry from ingredients and packaging to regulation, retail and marketing.
With more than 2 million website visitors, 100,000 subscribers and 170,000+ LinkedIn followers* worldwide, advertisers can expect to engage with a captivated and loyal community of professionals, and align their business with a trusted industry partner.
PARTNER WITH US
Based on your objectives, we can create bespoke packages designed specifically for you – from presenting your expertise on the main stage, to hosting a private dinner. You can partner with us showcase your brand and make valuable new connections. Opportunities predominantly lie in 3 main categories: Thought Leadership, Branding & Networking.
To discuss your objectives and partnership opportunities please contact [email protected]
Interested in a media partnership?
We'd love to hear from you and how we can support one another to connect with the industry. Contact [email protected]
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— September 30, 2023 —
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