The Business of Alt Protein: Effective marketing and communications for your B2B startup

AnnaMaria White

STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS CONSULTANT, WHITE STAR COMMUNICATIONS

Founder and principal at White Star Communications, AnnaMaria brings over twenty years of strategic communications experience, spanning a variety of tech and product industries. She was the first in-house communications leader at Relativity Space, and oversaw all aspects of the company’s brand leading into a $500M Series D. Currently, AnnaMaria serves as a fractional communications partner and advisor for early stage climate tech companies and funds, including Aigen, which recently celebrated a successful Series A. Her work focuses on helping funds and companies hone compelling branding to reach investors, customers, and employees. AnnaMaria received her BA from Columbia University, and currently lives in the rainforests near Seattle with her husband, two children and their dog, Wash.

Emilie Fitch 

Emilie brings over 20 years of marketing, brand building, and commercial leadership experience spanning multiple industries, company growth stages, and business models. Along with building and leading marketing and brand teams, she has held general manager roles with cross-functional team leadership and P&L responsibility for businesses up to $600 million in annual revenue.

Emilie is currently leading the development of People for Better Food, a new non-profit focused on helping consumers reflect more consciously on our culture’s deep-seated relationship with meat to make more informed and intentional decisions about their eating behavior for their health and the planet.

Previously, Emilie was the Chief Growth Officer and employee #1 at Nowadays, a clean label plant-based meat company. Before that, she served as Head of Growth at Ginkgo Bioworks, where she created and built out their marketing and growth functions, led commercial strategy initiatives, and helped create multiple spin-off companies. She also worked as a brand lead at Kraft Heinz holding marketing leadership and general management roles on multiple brands. 

Emilie holds a BA from the University of Richmond and an MBA from Kellogg.

Nico Westermann

Ex-Meta/Facebook Strategic Marketing Consultant & Advisor; currently with Food Systems Innovation, Climax, Every Co; Co-Founder of People for Better Food.

Nico has spent his career helping many of the world’s biggest brands, most innovative businesses, and fastest-growing disruptors across all consumer categories toward creative effectiveness and marketing success. Along this journey, he has envisioned and built teams uncovering the future of people-inspired, data-empowered creative marketing. He combines deep expertise in strategy with broad experience across all levers of marketing to help brands and businesses thrive.