Ignace de Nollin

Ignace is a born entrepreneur with experience in food, retail and pharma. Today he is fully engaged  to bring those three worlds together with SmartWithFood, a Belgium-based scale-up. SmartWithFood is a B2B Food Intelligence platform enabling highly personalised food & health experiences by taking the complexity out of shopping for the right food.

Ignace studied a master’s in economics at the university KULeuven – Belgium, followed by a Msc in project management at the University of Lancaster, UK. After his studies, he built-up real-life experience in finance and accounting at Avery Dennison. For GlaxoSmithKline & ArcelorMittal, Ignace led the team through the implementation of a new project management methodology and corresponding (SAP) software.

Ignace’s vision to prioritise investments in preventative over curative healthcare was formed during his role as the project lead in patient recruitment for the largest PhaseIII oncology trial, an international study in 34 countries in lung cancer ever done at GlaxoSmithKline.

In 2011, Ignace joined Colruyt Group (leading Belgium retailer) in various roles.  Currently he is leading the ‘Corporate Garage’ team, directly reporting to the board. The Corporate Garage is an internal incubator to drive disruptive innovations in anticipating future retail. Agility, hands-on and business driven innovation are the key drivers and building blocks of the incubator.