UMichigan x IMAGINE

I left Pakistan at the age of 18. After studying Engineering, Business Management and Technopreneurship in Singapore, and Computer Science in Canada, I started my career with Unilever in 2009. I have worked both in developing markets such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Argentina, Mexico and in developed markets such as Singapore and now in the Netherlands. I have deep expertise in partnership ecosystems development and value chain transformations in a wide variety of multi-billion Euro portfolios.

In my current position, as Global Head of Procurement for Nutrition Business Group, I am very passionate about the opportunity to lead in the design
of Unilever’s future economic (not financial) model and not only how that contributes internally to top and bottom line but also how it incentivizes and drives value externally. The biggest challenge lies in ensuring the head space
to think about it more deeply and to be able to make that degree of difference. I create that headspace for myself and for my internal and external partners, by courageous leadership. My role encompasses working with over 3000 partners across the globe to help land our Force for Good Foods strategy. In this capacity, my team leads the implementation of Unilever’s Regenerative Agriculture program working closely with our partners across the value chain – supply partners, disruptive innovators, investors, and governments.

Prior to this role, I was Global Director of Procurement for Food Ingredients. Under my leadership, procurement transformed the resilience landscape during the challenging pandemic period and the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Before moving to the Netherlands, I was Head of Procurement for North Latin America. I led multi-million Euro partners’ and government’s investments to enable plastics recyclability and collection across the industry. I had the honor to represent Unilever when we became the first company in the Republic ́s history to sign a Plastic Memorandum in Mexican parliament.