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Kerry welcomes Harvard’s professor of Global Food System to Ireland
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Monday, 22 June, 2026, 14 : 00 PM [IST]
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Ireland
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Kerry hosted professor Wolfram Schlenker, the inaugural Ray A. Goldberg Professor of the Global Food System at Harvard University, at its Global Innovation Centre in Naas, Co. Kildare.
The company is a member of the Founders Circle of Harvard's first university-wide endowed chair dedicated to the global food system — the collective of corporate leaders, scholars, and agribusiness figures. It was established to honour the legacy of Ray A. Goldberg — widely regarded as the father of agribusiness — who passed away earlier this year at the age of 99, and whose vision of a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach to global food challenges now lives on through the research and teaching this professorship supports.
Convened under the Kerry Health and Nutrition Institute (KHNI) and moderated by Dr Mary Shelman, founder of the Shelman Group, the discussion brought together professor Schlenker and Juan Aguiriano, group head of marketing and sustainability at Kerry, to examine how climate volatility, environmental strain, geopolitical disruption and AI are reshaping risk across the global food system — and what must change to build resilience.
The conversation explored how resilience must be understood differently across commodities and specialised ingredients, why sustainability should be viewed as a core driver of risk management and long-term value creation, and where greater transparency is needed around trade-offs between sustainability, affordability, resilience, and nutrition. Speakers also pointed to the growing role of data and artificial intelligence in enabling more resilient production systems, smarter supply chains, and more informed consumer choices.
“What came through clearly in this discussion is that resilience cannot be reduced to a single metric or solved in isolation. Food system leaders are navigating interconnected pressures — from climate and trade disruption to affordability and nutrition — and the companies that will create long-term value are those that embed sustainability into decision-making as a source of resilience, innovation and strategic advantage,” said Shelman
“Across the food industry, we are seeing growing recognition that sustainability, resilience and nutrition are not competing priorities — they must be addressed together. The challenge now is to turn better data and stronger science into practical action across supply chains and innovation pipelines, so we can help customers deliver food and beverage solutions that are more affordable, more sustainable and better for people and planet,” said Aguiriano.
“The decisions being made in boardrooms and research labs will determine what lands on plates in 2040 and beyond. The science of climate, agriculture, nutrition and sustainability is no longer a set of separate bodies of knowledge — they are deeply connected. Discussions like this one, bringing industry and academia together, are how we translate research into real-world change,” said Schlenker.
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