Forum Speakers

Christophe Beck is chairman and chief executive officer of Ecolab, the global leader in water, hygiene and infection prevention solutions and services that protect people and the resources vital to life. He guides Ecolab’s 47,000 associates as they provide unique expertise and innovative solutions to help make the world cleaner, safer and healthier.

As a trusted partner for millions of customers in over 40 industries, many of the world’s most recognizable companies rely on Ecolab to help improve their outcomes, including operational performance, product quality, customer satisfaction and bottom lines, while delivering on their ambitious sustainability commitments.

Christophe believes Ecolab is uniquely positioned to help solve society’s most pressing water and climate challenges. “Water stewardship is critical to reducing energy use and advancing net zero goals, and vital to help address our world’s environmental challenges.” In 2021 alone, Ecolab helped customers avoid 3.6 million tons of GHG emissions and preserve 215 billion gallons of water, equal to the annual drinking water needs of more than 700 million people.

Christophe was named Ecolab’s president and chief executive officer in January 2021, and chairman in May 2022. Since joining Ecolab in 2007, he has held several senior leadership roles, including president and chief operating officer; executive vice president and president, Global Industrial Group; executive vice president and president of Nalco Water, an Ecolab company; and executive vice president and president, International Regions. He also led the integration of Nalco following Ecolab’s acquisition of the company in 2011.

Christophe is recognized as a thoughtful and effective leader, and in 2006, was nominated as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum for his accomplishments and commitment to shaping a better world.  

A native of Switzerland, Christophe holds dual Swiss and U.S. citizenship. He has a master’s degree in Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and serves on the institution’s strategic advisory board. He also serves on the board of directors of the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation.

Early in his career, Christophe worked on a space shuttle project for the European Space Agency. He and his wife have two children and live near the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Andrea Albright serves as executive vice president, Sourcing, for Walmart. Since joining the company in 2005, Andrea has held positions of increasing responsibility, driving innovation and transformation across the Walmart U.S. Merchandising and People organizations, and earning a reputation as a dynamic, solutions – oriented leader.

Most recently, Andrea served as senior vice president/general merchandising manager for the Snacks, Beverages, Candy, Front-End and Convenience business. In this role, she orchestrated a rapid turnaround boosting topline sales with less inventory, spurred reinvigorated partnerships and innovations and raised customer experience scores via reimagined alcohol and checkout merchandising experiences. Prior to this role, Andrea served as Vice President of Home Office HR.

Andrea has been recognized as an International Women’s Forum fellow and a rising woman in business by Fortune Most Powerful Women Next Gen. She credits her success to creating strategies with a customer-first mindset while building highly competent, cognitively diverse teams that can effectively execute against those strategies. With 10 years of leadership experience managing and inspiring large teams, she fosters environments built on trust and psychological safety – a proven model that encourages radical candor among team members, accelerates the speed of collaboration and innovation and results in less waste and more targeted use of resources.

Andrea earned dual master’s degrees from University of Arkansas (an M.B.A. and M.Ed., HR Development) and a B.S., Apparel & Textile Science, from Kansas State University. She is a University of Arkansas MBA alumni board member, as well as an alumni board member for Kansas State University College of Health & Human Services, Girl Scouts national board member and Cancer Challenge board member. Andrea lives in Bentonville, Arkansas with her husband Patrick, daughter Mackenzie and son Liam.

Dave Clark has more than 20 years of business leadership experience at Amazon. Throughout his career, Dave has built a reputation for logistical excellence, strategic and long-term thinking, a high degree of integrity, and a deep commitment to serving customers. Dave began his career at Amazon in 1999 as an Operations Manager, working his way up to become the CEO of Amazon’s worldwide consumer business in 2021.

While holding significant leadership roles, Dave was the driving force behind the development and expansion of Amazon’s fulfillment and logistics programs, which have become the backbone of the company’s retail business. He also oversaw several key divisions, including online stores, physical stores, third-party seller marketplaces, and the Amazon Prime subscription business, generating more than 75% of Amazon’s revenue in the first quarter of 2022. Dave helped define the vision for Amazon’s commitment to carbon neutrality as well, presenting a TED Talk in 2020 entitled: Amazon’s climate pledge to be net-zero by 2040.

Currently, Dave is a member of the American Red Cross Board of Governors as a long-time advocate for the organization. His accolades include the 2016 University of Tennessee Accomplished Alumni Award and the 2018 Seattle Business Magazine Executive Excellence Award. He also returned to his alma mater as Auburn University’s 2022 Commencement Speaker. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education from Auburn University and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Tennessee.

Scott Galloway is a Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business where he teaches Brand Strategy and Digital Marketing to second-year MBA students and is the author of the Digital IQ Index ®, a global ranking of prestige brands’ digital competence. In 2012, Professor Galloway was named “One of the World’s 50 Best Business School Professors” (Poets & Quants). Professor Galloway is also the founder of several firms, including L2, a subscription business intelligence firm serving prestige brands; Red Envelope, an e-commerce firm (2007, $100mm revs.); and Prophet, a global brand strategy consultancy with 250+ professionals.

Professor Galloway was elected to the World Economic Forum’s “Global Leaders of Tomorrow,” which recognizes 100 individuals under the age of 40 “whose accomplishments have had impact on a global level.” Professor Galloway has served on the board of directors of Eddie Bauer (Nasdaq: EBHI), The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT), Gateway Computer, and Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. He received a BA from UCLA and an MBA from UC Berkeley.

Barbara Bergmeier joined JLR as Executive Director, Industrial Operations in July 2022.

She leads JLR’s Industrial Operations organisation, which incorporates the responsibilities previously split across its separate manufacturing, purchasing and supply chain teams. This change consolidates accountability for the complete ecosystem of how the company produces vehicles, in one place.

A key priority for Barbara’s reconfigured organisation is JLR’s robust, sustainable end-to-end supply chain as part of a fully connected industrial strategy. In turn, this will deliver greater efficiency and resilience of the company’s industrial operations across a connected global landscape.

Barbara joined JLR from Airbus Defence and Space, where she was Executive Vice President & Head of Operations. Barbara previously worked for almost 25 years at the BMW Group in international roles including Vice President of Chassis & Drive Components and Vice President of Assembly & Logistics.

A values-based, people-centric leader with more than 30 years’ multinational experience in the global automotive and aerospace industries, Barbara has an extensive background in OEM as well as tier one and internal supplier environments. Her diverse perspectives will enable Barbara to build on strong supplier relations, reinforcing JLR’s position as a customer of choice.

Barbara is passionate about the digitalisation of companies as part of improved performance and competitiveness. Her dedication to quality and sustainability will play a key role in realising JLR’s Reimagine strategy, including fulfilling its Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) commitment to reduce operational greenhouse gas emissions by 46 per cent by 2030, as well as achieving net zero carbon emissions across supply chain, products and operations by 2039.

Barbara holds a degree in Business Administration from the University of Applied Sciences in Landshut, Germany. She lives in the UK with her husband Sebastian and, outside work, Barbara’s interests include the great outdoors, animals, running, yoga and cooking for family and friends. She is also passionate about supporting community and charity endeavours.

Antoine Vanlaeys is Chief Operations Officer and member of the Executive Committee. He leads the entire supply chain of all L’Oréal Group, worldwide – from packaging design and product development, purchasing, manufacturing, and market logistics operations (more than 6 billion products). Antoine, along with his teams, implements winning Supply strategies and is leading Operations’ major transformations including e-commerce acceleration, Industry 4.0 and sustainability.

Prior to this, Antoine was Senior Vice President Operations for the Asia Pacific region during 5 years. In his tenure, he enabled together with his teams the rapid growth of the Group in the region, and particularly the acceleration of e-commerce in China. Antoine is passionate about leading Operations transformations, driving excellence through people and technology. Previously, he has enjoyed a rich career path, holding various senior management positions in Operations.

In 2011, he was appointed Senior Vice President Operations of L’Oréal Luxe, where he led the industrial transformation to support the growth of the luxury brands. In 2008 he was appointed Supply Chain Director Europe for the Consumer goods Division, and in 2006 he was Plant Manager in Aulnay-sous-Bois (France).

Antoine joined L’Oréal Group in 2002, after a 10-year experience at Mars, where he headed different important responsibilities in France and overseas, in manufacturing and supply chain. As an Engineer, he graduated from ICAM (Mechanical Engineering school), in France.

Reginaldo has a rich history at Unilever spanning over 30 years with extensive supply chain experience in both developed and emerging markets.

After graduating from Universidade de Sao Paulo as an electrical engineer, Reginaldo started his journey at Unilever Brazil as a trainee in 1991. Just two years later, he was responsible for building a new factory and the production of a new category – powder detergents.

Since then, through leadership positions across Unilever’s supply chain in North America, Latin America and Central America, Reginaldo has been at the forefront of transforming our supply chains, ensuring they are future-fit. In his most recent role, Reginaldo served as Executive Vice President of Unilever Mexico, Central America and Greater Caribbean overseeing 11 countries, 12 product categories and high levels of growth despite the pandemic. Before this, he oversaw our supply chain in North America and Latin America, generating double-digit growth in the profitability of one of our largest regions.

Jon Orwant is a Senior Engineering Director of Google AI, where he leads the Operations Research organization, focusing on AI for supply chain optimization. Dr. Orwant has led machine learning, visualization, and search teams at Google. Prior to Google, Dr. Orwant was director of research for France Telecom and CTO of O’Reilly Media. He received his BS, MS, and PhD from MIT.

Ernest Nicolas is the Chief Supply Chain Officer for HP Inc., whose global supply chain delivers more than 100 million products to customers each year through a sophisticated network of HP and ODM factories, logistics providers, and other valued partners. As Chief Supply Chain Officer, Ernest also drives the social and environmental sustainability efforts tied directly to HP’s global reputation and business growth.

Ernest joined HP in 2022, bringing more than 25 years of global experience in end to-end, integrated supply chain functions. His experience includes industrial engineering, production management, and supply chain planning with General Motors, where he was awarded the General Motors Graduate Fellowship to pursue full-time graduate study. In 2006 he joined Rockwell Automation, serving in Lean Six Sigma project management, supply chain planning, manufacturing operations, strategic sourcing, logistics as well as customer service functions in North America and Asia before being named Senior Vice President and Chief Supply Chain Officer in 2019.

He serves on the Board of Directors for Avient Corporation and is an Advisory Board member for Wahl Clipper Corporation. A passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion, Ernest is a member of the Executive Leadership Council (ELC), an organization focused on advancing and preparing the next generation of diverse corporate leaders. He is also an Executive Advisory Board member for the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business’s Supply Chain Management program.

Ernest grew up in the southern suburbs of Chicago and is married with two children. He holds an MBA in Operations Management and a Master of Science in Manufacturing Systems Engineering from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, as well as a Bachelor of Science in Manufacturing Systems Engineering from Kettering University. Ernest is based in Houston, Texas.