Karim holds a PhD in Marine Science and is a passionate windsurfer who started out opening a pizza business in London straight out of university. Since then, he has extensive leadership experience in Sales & Marketing and Management mainly in Health and Nutrition. He started his career in 1989 as Project Manager in R&D in Aquaculture for Trouw International (Nutreco). Between 1992 and 2001, he held different positions within F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. such as Country Manager, Regional Manager and Feed Industry Manager. He joined DSM as UK Country Manager in 2003 and developed to Vice President Western Europe in 2005. In 2007, he grew the business several fold as Vice President Asia Pacific & Indian Continent, and from 2017 to 2022 as CEO of Veramaris he helped build the start-up biotechnology company into a mainstream supplier of natural marine algal Omega 3 replacing fish oil, by adapting value chain marketing, from farmers to retailers, into its business model. Most recently within dsm-firmenich, he leads a multi-disciplinary task force to develop a net zero single cell protein for food, feed and companion animal sectors.