Ana Isabel Alves is the Executive Director of ACIBEV, the Portuguese Wine and Spirits Trade Association, since 2020, having previously been Secretary General since she joined the Sector in 2008. For almost 15 years she is the representative of the Portuguese wine producing companies in their European and international federations, allowing her to work the main regulatory and political issues that impact on the life and the everyday business of the companies. She is also member of the Wine Civil Dialogue Group, entity that assist the EU Commission (DGAGRI) in maintaining a regular dialogue on all matters related to the policy on wine.

Francesco Montanari is a lawyer specialised in the agri-food sector with over twenty years of experience. Italian and Portuguese by nationality, he holds a PhD in EU law from the University of Bologna and a MSc in Food Consumption Science from the Open University of Lisbon (2021). Francesco has been working at international level on agri-food issues since the beginning of his career, including for the UK retail sector and the European Commission. Since 2013 he has been consulting on agri-food law matters in Lisbon advising both private and public clients. He is currently Invited Professor of Food law at the Open University of Lisbon, Integrated Researcher at CEDIS and member of the Nova Consumer Lab of Lisbon Nova School of Law. His areas of research and interest include food labelling, sustainability, innovation, and international trade of agri-food products. Francesco is author of several academic and professional publications, including a handbook on food labelling rules in the EU and a book on the regulation of edible insects.

Antonio Picasso is the Director general of Competere – Policies for sustainable development. He has been a journalist since 2008, with his career divided into two acts. He began writing about economics and finance, then moving on to international relations. He traveled, boots on the ground, to the biggest crisis hotspots of the first decade of the 2000s (including Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan). He was and remains a witness to the deep transformation of the media world. From the analogue to the digital, from cold cases to the constant live show of social media. He has written for Il Riformista, La Stampa, Liberal, Limes and Linkiesta. As a TV author, he has also worked for Rai. In 2010, a few months before the outbreak of the Arab Springs, he wrote “Il Medio Oriente cristiano – Reportage dal cuore della Mezzaluna fertile”. In 2013, he moved from journalism to communication consulting. With particular focus onto the institutional relations of the business world, he was Head of Communications for Confindustria Pavia (2014-2019) and Anav Lombardia (2016-2020). He has specialized in public affairs, crisis communication and brand journalism activities, skills that he puts at the service of companies and trade associations operating in the manufacturing, mobility and commodity sectors and that demonstrate a particular propensity for environmental sustainability and innovation.