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Senior Vice President R&D, Global Beverages
PepsiCo
Tara has spent most of her 28 years in industry leading across a wide range of consumer categories, where she developed a track record of reinvigorating pipelines and consequently business performance by lining up consumer insights with scientific ones to create superior products that drive consumer loyalty.
Tara joined PepsiCo in July 2022 from Reckitt Benckiser where she had worked since 2019. While at Reckitt, Tara led R&D for two of the three business units: Health and Nutrition. This included the teams responsible for Enfamil®, Nutramigen®, Strepsils®, Lemsip®, Nurofen®, Mucinex®, Dettol®, Durex® and Neuriva®. She was responsible at a corporate level for shaping the strategy that led to reviving the product pipeline, by putting a new focus on developing superior products. In addition, she focused on continuity of supply through Covid-19, helping the team react nimbly through regulatory and raw material challenges to keep products flowing to customers.
Prior to joining Reckitt, Tara spent more than twenty years working across the categories and sectors of Johnson & Johnson. Tara has her MS in Materials Engineering from Drexel University and her BS from Jefferson University in Philadelphia. She has recently moved back to the US from the UK with her husband and two children.
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Chief R&D Officer Panel
Rethinking R&D: Navigating the New Landscape of Consumer Product Innovation
Simultaneous forces are putting unprecedented pressure on today’s consumer products R&D organizations. From lingering impacts from the pandemic, to nimble, disruptive new market entrants, to talent and sustainability challenges, it’s clear R&D needs to evolve fast. R&D leaders need a renewed approach to consumer product innovation that will drive sustained competitive advantage. Join our panel of consumer product innovation leaders as they reveal how they are reconfiguring the R&D function to reestablish its position as a central pillar of their organization's business strategy. Engage with these experts as they delve into topics like talent strategies, ways of working, the role of AI, and how innovation should involve the end-to-end value chain.