
Hamish Taylor
Hamish Taylor will be contributing his insights on the session “Food Security and Sustainable Consumption” on February 4th. Hamish is a strategic advisor for the fragrance company Symrise. He is a passionate advocate of sustainability causes and has led initiatives with significant impact in Madagascar, Uganda and Italy.
Graduated in Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh, Hamish has worked extensively with Symrise since establishing his own strategic consulting company, Shinergise Partners Ltd. in 2007. Prior to that he spent 20 years with Quest International Fragrances Division in a series of international Sales & Marketing roles. He was a member of the Symrise global Flavors Leadership Team from 2010-2015 and for the past six years has led the development of the Flavors Division Sustainability strategy. He co-founded the Sustainable Vanilla Initiative (SVI), inviting IDH (the Dutch Sustainable Trade Initiative) and Sustainable Food Lab (the US based NGO) to co-convene the stakeholders on either side of the Atlantic.
He continues to represent Symrise on the SVI Steering Committee and on the similar body that oversees the Unilever-GIZ-Symrise-Save The Children Madagascar initiative. He has participated in high-level advisory roles with Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan. Together with colleagues at Symrise he has pioneered the use of the SAI Platform FSA 2.0 tools and co-developed the UEBT/UTZ Certified Vanilla standard. In his independent capacity he has provided organisational development and strategic marketing consultancy for Unilever, MARS Petfood and Food, P&G, AkzoNobel, Microsoft and Smurfit Kappa as well as providing high performance leadership coaching for L’Oréal and other major multinationals.
Hamish has presented on Sustainability at IFEAT (San Francisco 2013), EFEO, Supply Chain Summit (Amsterdam 2014) and EFEO (Paris 2017) and participated in several pre-competitive workshops including Trade for Sustainable Development, SB 2016 and the Living Incomes Working Group.