Our Team
Greg Horn
Greg Horn is a leading innovator in health and nutrition business, with three decades of experience in developing and managing companies associated with personal health, nutrition and environmental sustainability. Greg has co-founded several branded nutrition and healthy living companies including Brand New Brands, a functional food and beverage brand incubator, Attune Foods, one of the first probiotic foods companies, STRONG Research, a science-based sports nutrition company and Celsius®, one of the first functional beverages with clinical studies proving efficacy. He has served as founding CEO of several science-based nutrition companies including Axcella Health, a biotechnology company focused on therapeutic proteins and IncrEDIBLE Foods, an innovative food company based on a Harvard professor’s technology for creating delicious edible packaging. Greg is also a co-founder and longtime Chairman of the Selection Committee for Nutrition Capital Network.
Earlier in his career, Greg served as turnaround CEO of Garden of Life, currently the top nutrition brand in the natural channel, and General Nutrition Centers (GNC), the world’s largest health and nutrition retailer, where he was instrumental in building the GNC brand and in expanding the company from $400 million to $1.5 billion in revenue over his 11 years in management. He was chairman of Royal Numico’s North American Executive Committee, overseeing all the company’s $2.5 billion specialty retail, mass market, and direct selling operations in North America.
Greg is a speaker on health and sustainability and author of the best-seller Living Green (Freedom Press, 2006), Living Well (Lighthouse Press, 2016) and co-author with Fred Maxik of The Meaning of Light (Lighthouse Press, 2011). Greg holds an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School and a BA (summa cum laude, phi beta kappa) from the University of Redlands. More at www.GregHorn.com.
Guru Ramanthan
Dr. Guru Ramanathan is a globally recognized expert on Innovation Management and his advisory concentrations include Scientific Affairs, Regulatory Compliance, Quality Assurance and Control, Clinical Trials Design & Management, Technology Acquisition, Alliance Management, Product Development and Manufacturing in the Global Health and Wellness Industry.
Dr. Ramanathan’s industry experience spans Clinical care, Pharma, Consumer health, Animal health and the Retail sectors. His most recent appoint was with Pittsburgh based General Nutrition Corporation (GNC) as its Chief Innovation Officer and head of Global Manufacturing Operations, Senior Vice President and Member of the Executive Committee. Prior to that Dr. Ramanathan was a Senior Director for the US subsidiaries of Nutricia. Before this he was Medical Director for the US subsidiary of Scotia Pharmaceuticals.
Dr. Ramanathan currently serves on Corporate and Advisory Board’s for established and early-stage companies in Global Food, Nutrition, Pharma, OTC, Digital Health and Primary Care Medicine industry sectors. He is very actively involved in the global nutraceutical and medical foods (FSMP) industry segments.
Dr. Ramanathan is an Adjunct Professor at Pennington Biomedical Research Center and has held various research and teaching appointments in India and the US. He holds an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and earned his Ph.D. from Tufts University in Healthcare Innovation Management.
Rolf Smeets
Rolf Smeets, Ph.D is a globally recognized industry expert in Medical Nutrition and Functional Foods with broad ranging experience in the design and development of new innovative science-based nutritional products, clinical trials for product safety and efficacy, establishment of industry quality, market access, medical affairs, corporate affairs and regulatory compliance.
Dr. Smeets industry experience spans over 25 years. He is the co-founder of an innovative global medical nutrition start up, Dutch Medical Food. Furthermore, he is advicing numerous specialized nutrition companies on strategy, R&D, regulatory and market access. Before that, he was with Danone as its Chief Medical Officer and member of the executive board of the medical food division. In this role, he worked with governments and healthcare providers from all over the world, implementing and ensuring access to the right nutritional regimens for patients.
He also was, as Head of Research for Medical Food, responsible for the full innovation pipeline with amongst other products supporting brain function like: Souvenaid, Liquigen and Ketocal. Dr. Smeets holds an MBA degree from the University of Groningen with modules at INSEAD, Yale and Wharton. He earned his Ph.D. from the Radboud University Nijmegen in Medical Sciences.