Gerda Feunekes new Managing Director Agrotechnology & Food Sciences Group

The Board is very pleased that Gerda Feunekes has accepted the position of Managing Director. Announcing Feunekes' appointment, Sjoukje Heimovaara, President of the Executive Board WUR, said, "Gerda Feunekes is a great asset to WUR. In her current roles as chair of the Wageningen Ambassadors and member of the AFSG Advisory Board, she knows the organisation well and will help further develop the broad applied and fundamental research at AFSG.”

Feunekes is also enthusiastic: "The Wageningen approach, multidisciplinary and international, has shaped me. As Managing Director AFSG, I can actively contribute to a greater impact of WUR on a healthy and sustainable world of tomorrow.”

Gerda Feunekes graduated as a nutritionist from Wageningen University in 1989. In 1996, she received her doctorate for a dissertation entitled "Food, fat, family and friends: studies on the impact of the social environment on dietary intake." Feunekes worked as a Consumer Scientist at Unilever doing research on vitality and as Global Nutrition & Health Director she was responsible for, among others, salt reduction. She has led the Netherlands Nutrition Centre since 2014. As Director of the Nutrition Centre, she has actively dedicated herself to strengthening the relationship between nutrition communication and science. Gerda chairs the European Public Health Nutrition Alliance, the group founded in 2014 that now unites the nutrition centres of 18 countries.