Barb Stuckey
President & CEO
Mattson
Since 1977, Barb has been at Mattson, a Silicon Valley-based insights, strategy, and development firm. She is currently President and Chief Innovation Officer at the country’s most successful independent developer of foods and beverages for the retail foods and chain restaurant industries. Barb is known as a taste, food trend, innovation, consumer insights, and product development expert.
As part of Barb’s role in the innovation projects that make up her daily job, she is required to taste food and figure out how to make it better. After more than 2 decades doing this, she’s honed her tasting skills and ability to help others make food taste better. She shared this insight with the world in 2012 when her book TASTE WHAT YOU’RE MISSING was published (the paperback edition was released under the simplified title TASTE).
Barb was instrumental in helping The San Francisco Cooking School integrate the science of taste into their curriculum. She now teaches the Fundamentals of Taste to each entering class.
Barb is a regular contributor to Forbes.com where she writes about the food industry. She serves on the Advisory Board of the Plant Based Foods Association, and was previously on the boards of the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, as well as La Cocina, the San Francisco-based food incubator for low income women of color.
Barb lives with her hypertaster husband and two artisan cats, and splits her time between San Francisco and Healdsburg, in the heart of Sonona wine country. She can be bribed with good tomatoes.