We are thrilled to announce that Saphineia has expanded our procurement and quality food safety capabilities with the additions of John Buckley and Michele Buchanan.
At Saphineia, we pride ourselves on our team’s real-world hands-on, experience cross-functional expertise, as well as our ability to collaborate effectively from the C-suite to the shop floor. The addition of John and Michele to Saphineia’s team enhances our capacity and capability to support middle market food beverage manufacturers in achieving sustainable improvements in performance and profitability.
Below we have included details on John’s and Michele’s respective backgrounds.
John Buckley – Sr. Director, Procurement
John brings 30 years of large CPG procurement experience to Saphineia, including 15+ years with Wrigley/MarsWrigley and over a decade with Keebler/Kellogg’s. Most recently, John served as Sr. Director of Global Procurement for Direct Material for MarsWrigley, where he had responsibility for the global flavors and mints categories. John’s career spans roles such as tactical buying to advanced global leadership roles – the breadth of his experience is particularly valuable when working with middle-market manufacturers, as procurement capabilities in these organizations often are relatively immature. Beyond John’s valuable procurement operations background, he adds depth in the sourcing of commodities, ingredients, and packaging materials. John received a B.S. in Business Administration from Aurora University.
Michele Buchanan – Sr. Director, Quality & Food Safety
Michele brings 40 years of Quality & Food Safety experience to Saphineia, including 30 years with Unilever and 10 years in her own consulting practice. While at Unilever, Michele’s roles included Global Quality Director for the Americas, North America Quality Director and Quality Capabilities Director for the Americas. Michele also served as Unilever’s Corporate Microbiologist.
Michele’s experience spans across a wide variety of food products, including beverages (including aseptic), confectionery, dry mixes, low moisture, acid & acidified sauces/dressings, low acid foods, frozen novelties and ice cream. She has significant experience in food safety program development and training, crisis management (i.e., recalls, including responding to microbial contamination incidents), sanitation, foreign matter and pest control incident prevention and acquisition due diligence.
Michele received her B.A. in Biology from Thiel College and her Masters of Science in Hygiene from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Public Health.
