On a continuing growth path, CuliNex, a clean label food product consultancy, has recruited two industry veterans to accelerate business development and marketing activities.

CuliNex announced the appointment of Lucinda Salinas as senior director of business development. Salinas brings over 30 years of food industry experience to the team. She will lead strategic sales, marketing and innovation efforts, reimagining how CuliNex will attract, nurture and serve its growing client list.

Before joining CuliNex, Salinas led key account sales and innovation services for Full Harvest Technologies, a groundbreaking business marketplace for surplus and imperfect produce. Prior to Full Harvest, she was the director of category marketing and consumer insights for IFF’s North American Taste Division before being promoted to lead business development for PowderPure by IFF. At National Food Labs, she served as group vice president for many years where she built and grew the innovation, product development and commercialization services portfolio.

Salinas graduated from the University of California Davis with a Bachelor of Science in Food Biochemistry and followed with an MBA from Saint Mary’s College of California. She lives in the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon with her husband, Steve, and their menagerie of cats, chickens and quail.

Kathy Stephenson joined CuliNex in September as the director of marketing, with the goal of elevating the organization’s presence in the marketplace, telling the CuliNex story, and introducing clients to current services. She will also oversee the launch of innovative initiatives the organization plans for clients looking for clean-label and plant-based formulation.

Stephenson has 30 years of food marketing experience with consumer, retail, foodservice and ingredient companies, both as a marketer and agency leader. Her first

roles as a food scientist and brand manager at the Clorox Company led to work with various food marketing agencies and most recently a marketing and communication leadership role with Pear Bureau Northwest. Stephenson’s food experience encompasses much of the market spaces shared by CuliNex clients, helping the team to find new service opportunities.

Stephenson earned an MBA at UC Berkeley, Hass School of Business and a Bachelor of Science in Food Science and Technology from Oregon State University. She and her husband live in Portland, Ore., where she enjoys hiking and sampling the food cart landscape in her town.

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