Rafael is the Vice-President – Food for Development for Tetra Pak, based in Stockholm, Sweden. In his global role, he is responsible for leading the Food for Development team, providing value-added support to Tetra Pak customers and developing partnerships with Governments, NGOs, UN, and International Development Agencies with the objective of implementing sustainable school feeding and nutrition programmes linked to local agricultural development.
Rafael has a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from the Wayne Huizenga Business School at Nova Southeastern University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from Loyola University New Orleans with specialization in International Business. He has more than 20 years of experience in international business development with a specialization in creating public-private partnerships to address food security and nutrition challenges.
Prior to his global role, he held various positions as a Commercial Director and Food for Development Director responsible for Latin America. Under his responsibility, he has led the collaboration with NGOs, UN, and International Development Agencies such as: GCNF (Global Child Nutrition Foundation), UN World Food Programme, FAO, SUN (Scaling Up Nutrition Business Network), GAIN (Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition), LA-RAE (Latin American School Feeding Network), INCAP (Nutrition Institute of Central America & Panama), Sida (Swedish International Development Agency), GIZ (German Agency for International Cooperation), Venture Dairy, Bureau of Nutrition & Development, Feed the Children, Heifer International, among others.
He has been involved in the collaboration and development of new school feeding programmes linked to local agricultural development in 18 countries and led the team that successfully implemented dairy development projects linked to smallholder farmers in Bangladesh, Nicaragua, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Albania, and Uganda. In 2021, 66 million children in 44 countries received milk and other nutritious beverages in Tetra Pak packages in school.
