Full Transcript for How IFF is Accelerating Bioscience Transformation with Leticia Gonçalves - Ep. 288

enforcement in Brazil, you will not get the industry together to do this. I had many impossible moments and we made impossible possible. In fact, Brazil today is 99.5% GMO and we developed the value capture system. And it became a Harvard Business Case a few years later. This was so difficult that it was recognized as a Harvard Business Case. So that's kind of one of the highlights of my career. Victoria Meyer: That's really awesome. Not many people get to say they were a Harvard Business Case, right? So that's really cool. And tackling tough challenges, right? So it's the big opportunity, but everybody may not see it, which, of course, is the case across agriculture, biosciences, chemicals, all of this space, right? So when we're in it, we understand it. But it's convincing everybody else, our customers, other stakeholders, that, hey, this is— this makes sense and we can do this together. Leticia Gonçalves: Correct. And I think you're spot on, Victoria. What also drove my career then into, you know, Bayer, IBM, and now EFF is how we connect science to innovation at scale, bringing the entire ecosystem together. From partnerships with the industry, governments, and regulators to make sure that we can advance, you know, regulatory approval and create an enabling environment, including government mandates, you know, to incent adoption of new technologies. I really love bringing that overall innovation ecosystem together. When I was at ADM, one of my roles was to create a precision fermentation business, you know, for alternative proteins, as well as venture capital. You know, corporate arm that we're investing in early-stage technologies, you know, Series A, Series B companies. And I love that because I also learned through my career, have to look into the ecosystem, including R&D, you know, research and development inside the companies, but also outside academia, you know, early-stage startup companies that are sometimes, you know, backed by, you know, VC investors, and kind of look at all those pieces to make sure that you can bring internal and external and partnership with customers to make sure that we can create innovation at scale. Victoria Meyer: Yeah, I love it. I love it. And I know we're going to be talking about that a little bit more today. Let's start talking a little bit about IFF because although it's probably— their products are in daily use by many of us, most people probably don't really know who IFF is. So can you shed some light on that? Leticia Gonçalves: Yeah, IFF came from the legacy International Flavors and Fragrances, but then You know, since 2021, you know, bought the DuPont Nutrition and Biosciences business. And today, IFF is a science-driven innovation company and a creation platform shaping how the world eats, feels, smells, heals, and lives, creating solutions that are better for you, better for the planet. We like to say we make joy to the world through science creativity, and heart. And obviously that gets translated into our BUs. You know, we have, you know, the Taste BU, which obviously is the flavors BU, bringing all the great tastes, you know, to, you know, food and beverage products. We have the Scent, which brings the fragrances to home and personal care. And then we have Health and Biosciences, which is the division that I lead, that really brings biosciences into so many different ways, from enzymes, cultures and probiotics that can get into, you know, removing stain from your laundry or removing food from your dish. That is a big role that enzymes plays. Leticia Gonçalves: Or feeding, you know, chickens, you know, because chickens are fed by enzymes that help their digestion and their nutritional profile. Or getting probiotics into dietary supplements. Or enzymes that go into high-protein dairy yogurts that can make yogurts lactose-free, for example. So the diversity and the applications are so, you know, so amazing, and you can really transform a lot of ingredients and processes with more clean label solutions, as well as you can drive more yield and productivity on the plants because enzymes can also be used as a catalyst into processing. So that's what IFF does. So it's amazing because we have a lot of diversity, and as I said, we make a lot of joy to the world. Victoria Meyer: Yeah, I love that. I'm going to come back on this question because I really want to know, understand more about the decision-making processes because with that level of diversity comes choice. And we'll get there. And in fact, one of the choices though that IFF has made, and you talked about it starting in 2021, but IFF is really reshaping its portfolio, divesting businesses that maybe don't make sense so much anymore, and putting a real focus on health and biosciences. What's driving that? And why is bioscience so important right now? Leticia Gonçalves: I think that's a great question. And I think you touched on the beginning of how we make choices. It always starts with consumer trends, with growth opportunities in the market tied to how people are connecting food, nutrition, health in their choices, right, to make sure that food becomes sometimes medicine in how we make choices. And also people looking for health and wellness in terms of how they drive their nutritional choices every day. That's one big trend. The other big trend is supply chain resilience. It's how we continue driving also more options for, you know, for industrial manufacturing, for our own customers, in making sure that they have supply chain resilience in terms of local and global, including, you know, addressing geopolitical situations, petrochemical-based product replacement with, for example, biopolymers. And we'll talk about that later, which is one of our disruptive innovation platforms. Leticia Gonçalves: And the third one is performance, cost, and sustainability with no compromise. We are bringing solutions that have similar performance or better performance than sometimes the

incumbent, but they are more sustainable and they have, you know, better addressing better needs in terms of clean label solutions when it comes to food and beverage or biopolymers in terms of bringing, you know, more renewable biodegradable polymers into solutions, or, you know, helping bring more yield into plants that can address supply chain resilience and use less energy and water into production. Victoria Meyer: Yeah. So, I mean, it has a— it's interesting, because I think bioscience, it's perhaps the original science, right, if we go back centuries and millennia, and yet it also feels very new across the industry as well, right? So, I mean, you've been working in this space for a long time throughout your career. But for many people, it feels very new. And, you know, when you think about crop science and fermentation and ventures that you took place in a lot of stuff at ADM, here you are at IFF doing similar things. And you've watched how these innovations become a business. What have you learned? What's really important about turning that science into commercial value? Because as you've already touched on, there has to be value in it to make it make sense for you as a company to continue to pursue. Yeah. Leticia Gonçalves: I feel even when I work in the corporate venture world with early-stage companies, the biggest roadblock that new technology faces is the cost and the capital for scalability adoption. Sometimes I even say to my team, you know, at IFF, in our R&D team, science for science means nothing. Science in the lab is just the beginning, but it can be pretty much the end if you don't connect science to cost and scalability. to drive innovation at scale in the market. And the reason it almost feels like, okay, that's, that's kind of common sense. Like, everybody should know that. It's not common sense, because what makes science to be successful and drive innovation at scale is to start with the right target, thinking, what is the final destination? You know, what, what is the new product you're going to launch for? What use, either as a replacement or a new application or a new market opportunity? And really understand what the success looks like from a market-back perspective. And also making sure that you bring partners and customers along the way with you to make sure that you can start identifying the demand creation, the cost of scalability already with the customers as part of the journey. Leticia Gonçalves: Kind of co-creation with customers and partners from the very beginning of the R&D. And lastly, I say patient capital. Most of the disruptive technologies, take time to materialize. And you have to have, you know, growth-led investors. You have to have the patient capital to make sure that you don't give up too early. You know, sometimes I see companies giving up maybe when they're almost there because they don't want to put the resources anymore. You just need to stay persistent and you need to make sure that you kind of continue funding proof points, not promises, funding proof points, but make sure that you stay persistent along the journey. A technology, for example, that we have that is very transformational, we have over 800 patents, it's what we call Design Enzymatic Biomaterials, DEB. Leticia Gonçalves: And that technology is in the making for over 12 years. Victoria Meyer: Wow. Leticia Gonçalves: You know, hundreds of millions of dollars invested. And now we are finally bringing that to commercial. And I'm glad that we made the decision to be persistent and continue funding, because now it's a platform that can create billions of dollars of value in the future. And it just took us to be patient and make sure that we didn't give up too early. Victoria Meyer: Yeah, I see that. And I know, I think one of the challenges I sometimes see with big companies is it takes a lot to move the needle. So as you're innovating, identifying new technologies, new products, new markets, it sometimes can feel like they're too small. And so then they get killed off, right? This whole aspect of patience. And this is where partnering really comes into play because many times smaller companies, and I know you've referenced working with, you know, Series A, B, C companies, the value that they bring is that they're solely focused on making that technology, that innovation, that business happen. How do you marry that at IFF? Because obviously you're both innovating as well as partnering for innovation. Leticia Gonçalves: For us, it's all about how we create the maximum value, and who we need to bring to the table, thinking the total ecosystem, to create the biggest pie we can. It's about creating the pie first, before being concerned about the share of that pie that we should have. I'll use an example. Connecting even biology, chemistry, and even AI, which we can talk about that. I feel the science are going to start converging pretty quickly here. But in this DB project, or even as we start thinking about the biopolymers world, we are a biology company, right? Our strength is biosciences and it's focused more on the biology side. We have chemistry processing, but we needed more chemistry knowledge from a company like BASF. So last year, I can share because it's a public announcement that was made last year, we said we need to combine biology and chemistry from 2 leading companies, IFF and BASF, to really get designing enzymatic biomaterials to really combine both companies' capabilities to create the biggest value, you know, out of this platform. Victoria Meyer: Yeah. Leticia Gonçalves: The reason I'm saying this, very few companies, when you have 800 patents in the technology, will be okay to, even before commercializing, already accepting, you know, help from a company like BASF. We identify like we are not the chemistry leader, we are the biology leader. We need to make sure we bring biology chemistry combine to create the biggest pie, and then we'll share the

value, right? Because then obviously, as long as we understand the value each of us are creating, that creates a value-sharing mechanism. But you see, being more focused on making the technology, the innovation at scale, and create the pie before we are too concerned about which part we should own of that pie. Many companies fail because they become too egocentric, trying to own it all, And sometimes we don't have the full answer and it's okay to ask for help and bring a partner along the way. It's okay to sometimes bring a customer along the way to kind of also combine with application capabilities or the consumer testing that we are, you know, we are not that company. We are not a CPG company. We are a B2B company. Leticia Gonçalves: The reason I'm saying one of our strengths is the ability to bring partners and customers early and be humble enough to recognize what we know and what we don't know. Victoria Meyer: Yeah, and that's so critical. I love that. And especially as you talk about partnering with BASF, bringing the chemistry. But I mean, you work closely with CPG companies who are close to the consumers because at the end of the day, they know what really matters to consumers, to their business, how to effectively go to market and create value. Leticia Gonçalves: Yes. And usually we do co-innovation with, you know, CPG companies, with our own customers. And we sit down with our R&D and we say, what are the biggest problems we're trying to solve for the world, right? Start even anticipating the next problems that maybe consumers not even know they have. But we go into these co-innovation workshops to kind of identify new product solutions. A good example in the laundry space, we work with a leading CPG company, you know, in home and personal care. And we said one of the biggest challenges for laundry you know, washing is the high cost of water and energy, right? Because sometimes, you know, we spend a lot of time with our clothes in the washing machine, in the dryer. So can we create an enzyme that is more effective with cold temperature and half of the time of the cycle, of the wash cycle? Like cold temperature, half of the cycle time with the same effectiveness, that it still gets your stains out of your clothes, that it still cleans your pool. So that was, for example, something we came together to say, now we have more powerful enzymes, you know, in the laundry detergent that can do that for you. Leticia Gonçalves: And now we're going to the next step. Can we create a new format for laundry dish bowls that is waterless, that it doesn't need to have water in the pod, or, you know, is a tile? It's like, you see, we're starting to base it on the needs of cost, performance, and sustainability. Victoria Meyer: Yeah. Leticia Gonçalves: You know, so kind of to also meet not only consumer needs, but also kind of be better for you and better for the planet, because we are also very interested in helping address like microplastics legislation in Europe, always with an angle of making also the planet better. Victoria Meyer: Yeah, it is. And it's a challenge, right? Because there's this whole aspect across the industry. And if you just think about consumer products and chemicals and biosciences, there is this aspect of continuous innovation. Right? And, you know, microplastics is a great example. At one point, let's say some of the film around laundry was considered a huge, amazing innovation. And then, you know, as decades go by, you're like, oh, this may not be the innovation we thought it was. And so I think we're always learning and adapting to what we know for business, for planet, et cetera. Leticia Gonçalves: Yeah. Victoria Meyer: Yeah. So, you know, we touched a little bit on just kind of figuring out which ideas go first, right? And I know you talked about the importance of having a long view on innovation and the fact that, you know, products may take a dozen years to get out of the lab and into commercialization. What are the real key characteristics about innovations that make their way out of the lab and are ready to compete with maybe what we consider traditional products? Leticia Gonçalves: I would say the trifecta of performance, cost, and sustainability. Some people say, and I saw a lot of technologies failing, if it's more sustainable, people are willing to pay a higher price or to compromise on performance. No. So you have to have, you know, performance, cost, and sustainability all delivering on the promise to be able to, you know, become a new innovation that can be scalable. You also have to tie to consumer needs. I know I used the example of the laundry and dish technology. But even if you look into the evolution of yogurts as becoming more prominent for high protein diets, right? Because a lot of people are eating, you know, less animal meat, especially red meat, and they're replacing, you know, their protein diversification with more dairy-based products. And think about convenience, right? When you think about a high protein drinkable yogurt, 32 grams, where you can have a lot of protein in a convenient way, you just go, you know, you don't need a spoon. Leticia Gonçalves: Mm-hmm. You can go drinkable yogurt on the go. You can take, you know, in the car with you, in the gym with you. The reason I'm saying one of the technologies we developed for that is cultures and enzymes that also help address the sweetness and the texture of the product that can make it be high protein and still be drinkable, still being, you know, with the right texture for you to actually be able to drink comfortably and address the convenience side of it. So that's another example, ambient yogurt, especially for emerging markets. That's one of the needs, you know, a lot of people in emerging markets don't have access to, you know, to a fridge, or they are in very hot temperatures and they need like ambient yogurt as a solution. So really understanding what are the

consumer needs and how we start developing new product solutions that can address those consumer needs and then bring back into the science, how science could solve that. So I always say it's a combination of a market-back approach with a technology-forward solution. Leticia Gonçalves: So bringing those 2 together is the recipe for success. Victoria Meyer: How far ahead are you looking? I think about like your example with yogurts and high-protein drinkable yogurt and the importance of texture, because, oh yeah, we've all been there. But you have to make some big bets pretty early. So there must be ways, you know, you're looking ahead, monitoring the trends, figuring out where it goes, and then I guess adjusting along the way. Is that the way you think about it? Leticia Gonçalves: Yeah. So first we create a vision. I, I always, when you talk about how we make this successful, you have to start with a vision connecting consumer trends to your own capabilities, what you think you can solve through your products and technologies, and create a vision of what the success look like in the next 5 years. From the vision, you kind of go quickly into your strategy in terms of where to play, how to win. Right? Kind of how do you define your opportunity spaces, your big bets, and clearly says what is the where to play and how to win associated with that to make sure that you also combine the big bets with your capabilities and how you're going to create unique differentiation and competitive advantage through that. And then you go and start creating your plan in terms of executing your vision and your strategy through the right governance, the right leadership, the right processes, to make sure that you can execute and deliver, deliver results. The reason I'm saying sometimes people jump too quickly into the solution, it starts with sharing the vision together and what does success look like, and then being very methodical on making the right choices on where to play, how to win. Because sometimes if you choose the wrong bet, that will be hard for you to correct, and then you have to fail fast and redo again. Leticia Gonçalves: But like, make sure that you validate your bets, invest accordingly, right? Make sure that your capital allocation strategy aligns with where you're prioritizing your growth strategy or your bets, and then execute successfully. And especially on the execution, bringing commercial operations and innovation cross-functionally to execute, to make sure that the science becomes scalable with the right cost in operations, because usually there is a component of processing, you know, the innovation that needs to have cost. advantage, and then start creating the demand with customers early. I always say you don't launch the products when you're actually launching the products. You have to launch the products a few years before you launch because you have to start creating demand and validating. Victoria Meyer: Yes. Leticia Gonçalves: Consumer pull, you know, before you actually launch, right? To make sure that you even validate that to make your launch successful. But all of that, you know, requires a lot of leadership and a lot of prioritization, choosing the right bets, Investing in the right places and building the right team to execute successfully. Victoria Meyer: I mean, and I think it's a great segue. I mean, you joined IFF in 2025 in the middle of IFF's transformation, which some people might say, boy, that's the easy time to join. I'm guessing it was a really hard time to join because let's be honest, no change takes place overnight. It's a multi-year process and really making strategy real and effective across a big organization going through that change is really hard. What has been significant? What do you think are the most— the key things that you've learned about making that transformation happen and what it requires from you and from leaders? Leticia Gonçalves: First is going into a room and develop a shared vision that we all believe as our North Star, right? Which that one starts with values, purpose and the vision, the mission on what we want to achieve together as a team. And I really spent a lot of time because in all of that, there is also a cultural element to make sure that we can drive the right transformation through the cultural lens of the transformation, which there is a lot of change management that goes with that, right? Yeah. So sharing that vision together is, I would say, one of the most important things to make sure your culture follows the vision And then from there, making tough choices. When I came into my role a year and a half ago, we had too many priorities. We were trying to do too many things at once, which then was really, you know, making it hard for us to execute successfully because we were, you know, we were not making real choices. We were just trying to do too much. So, it's really making sure that we understand the overall value creation, your growth algorithm, and choosing based on technology. probability of success, commercial probability of success, and the overall value model in terms of which, which technology commercial success bring what value, thinking more of a P&L element, you know, of making those decisions. Leticia Gonçalves: By doing that, you really get the organization focused on fewer, bigger, better bets. And then we really then start working also on the capabilities, how we innovate faster and better in R&D, and the what you call I2R, innovation to revenue, not just R&D, the innovation to revenue. how we drive more supply chain resilience on the end-to-end supply chain side of the business, and how we drive the commercial engine to win with big winners. Because sometimes the team wanted to do a lot of things with the smaller customers. Let's focus on winning with the big winners, because, you know, they are the ones that are going to drive the scale of innovation. So we created that strategy, and now

we're executing. We're, you know, one year into the new execution, and we are seeing some good progress. Victoria Meyer: Yeah, it's hard work, but it's also rewarding bringing the team along like that. Do you find— I mean, you came in as an external person coming in to lead this transformation. Did that make it easier or harder to get buy-in, do you think? Leticia Gonçalves: I would say first, the team felt I was genuinely interested in learning, understanding what's valuable, what's working, what's valuable, maybe not working, or what's not valuable, and we maybe should, you know, we should deprioritize. Yeah. But I feel the team, I spent like 3, 4 months really learning deeply to make sure that I was not making the wrong calls before I start making changes. At the same time, I start building confidence in the team that some of the things I was seeing will be good for everybody to accept as a positive change, right? That it will make us stronger and better together. And then building trust, you know, by having the psychological safety to even show vulnerability on my own mistakes from the past. Because at the end of the day, I always say to my team, if you're an innovation company, we have to accept some failures along the way. And the most important thing is fail fast, learn, and don't repeat the same mistake. Because then once you learn, you need to make sure that you avoid repeating the same mistakes. Leticia Gonçalves: But even creating that sentiment, that speed and agility, speed and learning agility are more important than perfectionism and not taking enough risks. Sometimes, you know, the culture was a little bit like, we need to be perfect before we do anything. No, you know, you have to compare the perfection versus risk-taking in the sense of speed and agility, because we want to shape and we want to be first. So, I'm not saying it's easy, to your point, cultural change is not easy. But I think once we start showing to the organization the value that everybody can get and how we build legacy and future to get to a better future— so it's not about the legacy's here and the legacy's great. So it's not about all those parts are going to become part of who we are in the future, because the legacy is too important. But it's legacy and a future-forward approach that will make the company better and better. Victoria Meyer: Yeah, I love that. And I think your point about building trust and about it's okay to fail fast, right? You're going to— when you're innovating, there's going to be some failures. You know, we could call them learning opportunities, and sometimes they're just misses. But this whole idea that imperfect action beats perfect inaction really holds true when you're innovating, when you're trying to drive change, etc. It holds true. Yeah. So, you know, as we look ahead over the next 3 to 5 years, what do you see is going to be fundamentally different about the role that bioscience plays, maybe not just at IFF, but across the

industry? Leticia Gonçalves: I would say what happened to pharma, right, because biotechnology is so prominent in pharma, you know, medicines, vaccines that we are exposed to in the healthcare world. I am hopeful, and we are obviously playing our own role to shape this industry where industrial biotechnology is going to become as prominent as pharma-based biotechnology has been to the healthcare industry. And industrial biotechnology in the sense of new technologies that will emerge, not only enzymes, cultures, probiotics, precision fermentation, but as we think about how bioscience is going to start enabling bio-based flavors, bio-based fragrances, bio-based polymers to replace specialty polymers across packaging, across, you know, water treatment, across nonwovens. across fibers and films that go into many applications. So as you can see, the potential is huge. Yeah. It's how we are going to really have companies like IFF and a few others that are going to help shape the industry and get even more support from the government, from regulators, to make sure that we can get the ecosystem in our favor to be able to create that patient capital and create the enabling environment. to make sure that we can bridge science into innovation at scale. Victoria Meyer: Love it. Leticia Gonçalves: And then the entire ecosystem participates and do their part. Victoria Meyer: Yeah, I like that. I mean, I think this is just this idea of making industrial biotech, as you say, as prominent as pharma biotech is. Pharma biotech. It's so important, right? Because we accept it. We accept it in other industries. The final question for you, Leticia, is around leadership and really the advice that you might have for young leaders and rising leaders in the industry? You've had the opportunity, of course, to lead across many countries and cultures and drive significant change and results. What advice do you have for somebody that maybe wants to pursue a similar path and really make that impact in this industry? Leticia Gonçalves: I would say a couple things. The number one trait of a good leader is learning agility. I would say in my 30-year career, If I didn't have the curiosity and the ability to learn from others and to, you know, even remove my own mental model sometimes to learn something completely new and prove myself wrong a couple of times, I would not be here where I am. And surround yourself with good leaders, right? Because at the end of the day, you know, from your boss, from your mentors, from your sponsors, your own team must start evolving into opposite management positions. You're only as good as your team, you know, because they will define your success, or they will make you not successful if they are not good. So, making sure that you create a high-performing team, that you have a growth-minded mindset, from mindset through behaviors and actions, and apply a humble, hungry, and curious approach to everything you do. I always like using the humble and hungry because the humble is going to make you not to think you know it all, make you continue to learn and continue, you know, applying your learnings into everything you do. Hungry, because it does take persistency, and it does take, you know, a bold vision and be hungry to achieve big things. Leticia Gonçalves: Otherwise, you will not be a good leader if you're not trying to break the ceiling again. And curious is to continue finding new opportunities in everything you do. And I would say, when I said about if it was not me saying, no a couple of times to myself. Like, when I was in my early 30s, I got an invite to move from Brazil to the US. You know, I've been outside of Brazil for now 21 years, but that was my first, you know, invitation to have an international career. And I said to my manager, no, I'm not leaving Brazil. My husband has his own business. I'm going to be a trailing wife to my husband. Leticia Gonçalves: I love my job, but no, I'm not leaving Brazil. My manager back then said, Don't say no. You're young. You don't have kids. Go home, talk to Rene, your husband, and maybe you guys will change your mind. Got home, I said— my husband said, no, we're not leaving Brazil. I said, see, I told you so. We're not leaving Brazil. Leticia Gonçalves: 2 days later, my husband woke up in the middle of the night like, I had a dream. Maybe we should go to the US, but just tell your boss that maybe 2 years, not 3 years. Long story short, I said no to then say yes because I changed my mind. And I allow even the process of my own self-discovery with my husband to say, yeah, let's go to an adventure. We now have 2 kids born in the US. We decided US is our home, you know, for the future. But it was, it was not that moment where I said no, but then I said yes, and I accepted to rethink because I was basing my answer on my legacy mental model. I was not thinking about what if and what could be opening new opportunities if I said maybe, which then became a yes. Leticia Gonçalves: I say this because there are life-changing moments. If you don't open up to kind of change how you think and not use your legacy to answer, but think about what if and start projecting a future forward answer, you will be limiting yourselves. Victoria Meyer: I love it. And obviously that what if has served you well. Leticia Gonçalves: Yes. And I had many, many, many what ifs throughout my career. I use that as one example, but I always I am always curious and I always learn and I always second-guess myself. Should I be thinking different? I know I'm using the mental model of the past, but maybe this time I should think in a different way. Like that learning agility and curiosity is one of the biggest opportunities for any leader. Victoria Meyer: Perfect. I love it. Well, Leticia, this has been excellent. I have really loved talking with you and learning from you. So thank you for joining me today. Leticia Gonçalves: Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. Victoria Meyer: Absolutely. And thanks everyone for joining us today on The Chemical Show. Keep listening, keep following, keep sharing, and we We will talk with you again soon. Thanks for joining us today on The Chemical Show. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and most importantly, share it with your friends and colleagues. For more insights, visit thechemicalshow.com and connect with us on LinkedIn. You can find me at Victoria King-Meyer on LinkedIn, and you can also find us at The Chemical Chemical Show podcast. Join us next time for more conversations and strategies shaping the future of the industry. Victoria Meyer: We'll see you soon.