The Foundation Council members of FiBL Switzerland perform valuable voluntary work, often serving long tenures. This is true for Ralf Bucher and Roland Frefel, who are leaving the Foundation Council after around eight years despite enjoying their work immensely. FiBL announced Marc Muntwyler as a successor in June and now Colette Basler in September.
Marc Muntwyler has held management positions at Coop for around twenty years. As Head of Sustainability and Economic Policy, he brings experience in the food industry and a desire to work towards a better future to the Foundation Council: "I want to help my two daughters and of course everyone else, to live in a more sustainable world in which we use resources more sparingly than we have done in recent decades."
Marc Muntwyler and Colette Basler
Another new member of the Foundation Council is the farmer and member of the Cantonal Parliament of Aargau Colette Basler. Together with her husband, she runs a 33-hectare IP-Suisse farm (IP-Suisse is the Swiss Association of Integrated Producing Farmers) with 40 dairy cows, young cattle, and arable farming in Zeihen in Fricktal. Basler is a qualified secondary school teacher and has worked in the profession for many years. Subject to election, she will take over as President of the Aargau Teachers' Association in a few weeks. She is also in the leadership of the Aargau Farmers' Association, where she holds the role of Vice President.
The FiBL Management Board also has new faces with the appointment of two department heads: Martina Bozzola and Stefano Torriani.
In Martina Bozzola, FiBL Switzerland has had a person with plenty of experience at the head of the Department of Food System Sciences since the beginning of September. The 42-year-old previously worked for around six years as Associate Professor of Economics of Agriculture, Food, and Health at Queen's University Belfast. She has also worked in various research and academic institutions in Switzerland and at the International Trade Centre, a joint organization of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the United Nations (UN).
Stefano Torriani took over as Head of the Department of Crop Sciences at FiBL Switzerland on 16 September. He previously worked at Syngenta for around ten years, most recently as "Global Lead Fungicide Resistance Management and Scientific Expert Bioscience" and for a further ten years at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in basic research.
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