The Keynote presentation at the 2024 Food Safety Summit, titled, “Being Right is Not Enough: Leading Food Safety in a Corporate and Global Environment,” took place on Wednesday morning. The Keynote speaker, Mary Weaver Gertz, Chief Food Safety and Quality Assurance (FSQA) Officer at Yum! Brands Inc., shared the critical importance of developing soft skills in food safety leaders to enable effective food safety leadership throughout a business.

Before Mary took the stage, Stacy Atchison, Publisher of Food Safety Magazine (FSM), introduced the session and thanked the Food Safety Summit’s Educational Advisory Board (EAB), announcing that EAB Chair Gillian Kelleher will remain in her role for the 2025 Summit. Stacy then invited Adrienne Blume, M.A., FSM Editorial Director, and Larry Keener, CFS, PA, Chair of FSM’s Award Committee, to introduce this year’s recipient, Kathleen Glass, Ph.D., who was selected for her work at the Food Research Institute (FRI) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. When accepting her award, Dr. Glass remarked, “This award serves as a testament to our teamwork and as a reminder of what we can achieve through collaboration.”