Danone Is Building Healthier Lives Through Data and AI | CGF 2026
In this Omni Talk Retail interview, recorded live from the Consumer Goods Forum Global Summit 2026 in Vienna, Chris Walton sits down with Ayla Ziz, Chief Commercial & Customer Officer and SVP Sales Europe at Danone, to discuss how AI, sustainability, and industry collaboration are shaping the future of consumer health.
Ayla shares how Danone is integrating AI into its commercial operations, why the company views AI as an enabler rather than a threat, and how skills-based workforce development is helping employees prepare for an increasingly digital future. She also discusses her leadership role within The Consumer Goods Forum Coalition for Healthier Lives and how retailers and manufacturers are working together to promote healthier diets, improve employee well-being, and drive measurable impact for consumers around the world.
Key Topics Covered:
• Ayla Ziz's role as Chief Commercial & Customer Officer and SVP Sales Europe at Danone
• How AI is transforming commercial operations and decision-making
• Why Danone sees AI as an enabler for speed, scale, and productivity
• Danone's approach to workforce development and AI training
• The importance of skills-based talent management in an AI-driven world
• The meaning behind the phrase "Performance without sustainability has no future"
• How Danone balances business growth with sustainability goals
• Ayla's leadership role in The Consumer Goods Forum Coalition for Healthier Lives
• The coalition's focus on healthier diets, wellness, and employee well-being
• Why defining "healthy" looks different across global markets
• How retailers and manufacturers collaborate around shared health objectives
• The role of industry-wide scorecards and measurement frameworks
• How AI can help scale healthier living initiatives globally
• Why collaboration remains essential to improving consumer health outcomes
• The growing role of technology in advancing public health and wellness
Special thanks to the CGF Leadership Studio sponsored by Vusion for supporting Omni Talk Retail's coverage in Vienna.
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy
Transcript
Hello, everyone, this is Omnitalk Retail.
Speaker A:I'm Chris Walton and I'm coming to you live once again from the Consumer Goods Forum Global Summit in Vienna, Austria.
Speaker A:And we are of course in the CGF Leadership Studio, which is sponsored by Vuzion.
Speaker A:Now joining me is someone we had on our show last year at cgf.
Speaker A:She's back again.
Speaker A:That's Aila Ziz, the Chief Customer Officer at Danone.
Speaker A:Aila, it's great to see you.
Speaker A:How are you?
Speaker B:Nice seeing you too, Chris.
Speaker A:Yeah, thank you.
Speaker A:The end of the day here, it's okay.
Speaker B:Still a lot of energy, it's still vibrant.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:We still have many meetings to go, so.
Speaker B:And looking forward for the drinks afterwards.
Speaker A:Right, right.
Speaker A:You and me both.
Speaker A:You and me both.
Speaker A:I'm probably all that stands between you and that.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So let's get right to it.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So remind us about all you oversee.
Speaker A:You know, at Danone, what is, what is the job of the Chief Customer Officer at Danone?
Speaker A:What does that entail?
Speaker B:So basically I look after our customers, making sure that we have a joint business, planning that, growing our customers business, but our business as well in Danone, so called jbps.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's it.
Speaker B:And then at the same time, I have the customer and the commercial aspect in Europe, so managing the top line for Europe in Danone.
Speaker A:Oh, okay.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:And so what's, I'm curious, what's changed the most in your job over the last year?
Speaker B:See, what's consistent and has not changed is we really aim to deliver the best products in the market in terms of taste and health.
Speaker B:So that's the essence of Danone.
Speaker B:The mission we have is to bring fear health through food to as many people as possible.
Speaker B:That has not changed yet.
Speaker B:We want to evolve and develop even further.
Speaker B:The biggest change we have is how do you integrate AI in our everyday work.
Speaker B:So digitalization of our work, but also integrating all the different sources of data possible to gain scale and speed in what we are doing.
Speaker B:And we see it as more of an enabler to our business.
Speaker B:So that's what I presume has changed the most in what I do.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:Well, I appreciate the frankness there too.
Speaker A:Now, one thing I wanted to ask you about, you had this interesting quote when I was doing the research.
Speaker A:I want to get it right here too.
Speaker A:So you said performance without sustainability is not lasting and sustainability without performance is not lasting either.
Speaker A:Tell us what all that means.
Speaker B:So actually the exact quotation is performance without sustainability has no future and sustainability without performance has no impact.
Speaker B:And what it is, it just tells you about the tension that we all have between delivering performance.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:Delivering the best products we can that are consumer based on consumer insights that are creating value, which is the essence of what we do.
Speaker B:But at the same time putting the planet and people in the heart of it.
Speaker B:So having a specific KPI on how do we reduce methane, how do we commit to reduce food waste, et cetera.
Speaker B:So all these sustainability that now it's completely anchored in our business but at the same time delivering performance so you don't have to trade off between the two.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:I like your quote better too.
Speaker A:I like your quote better.
Speaker A:So that's great.
Speaker A:It's a really, really powerful quote.
Speaker A:All right, so you've also co chaired the CGF Coalition for Healthier Lives.
Speaker A:That's part of your responsibility here at cgf.
Speaker A:What does shared responsibility look like in regards to that co chair position?
Speaker B:So I do co chair the Coalition for Healthier Lives with Tesco.
Speaker B:And the way we position this work is across three pillars.
Speaker B:The first one is dietary shifts.
Speaker B:How do we make sure that our consumers are being proposed and promoted with healthier products.
Speaker B:So as an industry we're offering healthier options for our consumers.
Speaker B:And how do we make sure that consumers are well informed about what is healthier so they can shift their diets?
Speaker B:That's the first pillar.
Speaker B:The second pillar is about wellness and well being, which is more and more important in today's world.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And the third one starting with our employees.
Speaker B:Okay, so how do we make sure that we have an impact and for this year we will be impacting more than 6 million people across our employees to make sure that we have a holistic approach, approach of well being, whether it's through food or non food items.
Speaker B:So these are the three pillars that we have in our coalition and what we have in a continuous basis is activation across the world.
Speaker B:So like for instance Japan where we try to reduce the salt intake so activation in every market that are relevant locally but are triggering a shift in our dietary diets like battery food every, every day.
Speaker A:Okay, got it.
Speaker B:That's our work as a colonist.
Speaker A:That's okay, got it.
Speaker A:So I want to ask you a question because I think, I think I want to let people as much behind the curtain of CGF and all that it's doing as possible.
Speaker A:So as much as you can share with me, I'm curious, so as you're chairing this coalition, what happens when there's an impasse, you know, and people just disagree, like how do you get past that?
Speaker B:We do have sometimes misalignment on what do we measure Exactly.
Speaker B:And also definitions.
Speaker B:You know, today, in today's world you do not have a definition of what healthier food or healthier diet means or wellness.
Speaker B:I was just our wellness.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker B:So if you think about Japan, healthier might mean as I was saying, reducing the amount of salt.
Speaker B:If you think about in the UK for instance, it would be increasing the amount of fresh vegetables and fruits in your diet.
Speaker B:Even you know, like what, what do we define?
Speaker B:Unless you go to the WHO definition which is, you know, reducing your fat, sugar and, and salt intake.
Speaker B:If you go a little bit more granular in what it means for everyday life, it's very different.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So of course and across the industry everyone has its own interpretation, everyone has its own KPI that they're measuring.
Speaker B:So how do we bring all this work together without putting pointing fingers to each other categories or, or manufacturers or retailers, but bringing everyone together.
Speaker B:So one of the ways we, we saw we sort that one is to be to, to work as a whole, as an industry, manufacturers and retailers and to, to assess the whole work we are doing in terms how do are we moving the needle.
Speaker B:So one KPI is for example, what are we promoting as a, as a, as an industry of our product, what percentage of our promotions are healthier option are healthy options.
Speaker B:And that's where we use for instance this time the ATNI with the HSR rating say okay, how much is it being promoted overall as an industry that is being considered with the rating over 3.5 on HSR.
Speaker B:And then out of this KPI, how are we evolving to a better.
Speaker B:So you know, so you're not pointing finger but you're finding common ground respecting everyone granularity.
Speaker B:Every company will continue ranking its, you know, its performance in a different way than the other.
Speaker B:And it doesn't matter.
Speaker B:It doesn't mean harmonization, it doesn't mean having the same objective but it means that overall as an industry we're moving it.
Speaker B:And so to answer again question, when you have your impact and people are like no, I'm not going to do the same than my neighbor because we each one of us has its own data and we don't want to obviously to break that silo.
Speaker B:Everyone is independent of but bringing together without harmonization underneath having same KPI helps a lot.
Speaker A:Got it.
Speaker A:So essentially what I hear you saying is that there's a scorecarding effort that goes on within the coalition to understand how are we doing.
Speaker A:And then each Individual participant in the coalition, whether it's a retailer or a manufacturer, can decide for them where they want to take that information and what they want to do with it as a part of the coalition.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker B:Keeping its own independence, keeping its own data set, keeping its own KPI, but at least contributing to the overall effort that we are doing to offer healthier options to consumers.
Speaker A:Got it.
Speaker A:Okay, so let's.
Speaker A:Before I let you go, I want to swing back around to the question of AI.
Speaker A:So what do you think the role of AI is in terms of the coalition's effort to promote a healthier way of living?
Speaker B:For me, AI is an enabler and for scale and pace.
Speaker B:When we were talking, for instance, with the KPI that we're putting in place, the fact that we can capture data all over in a super fast pace and scale what we are doing globally, for me, that's what AI is enabling us to do.
Speaker B:Which wasn't the case before because you had such a complex set of.
Speaker B:So you could say it's a global data, but the fact that you're taking it, you're analyzing it and putting it in a way that is facing consumers, for me, it's a massive enabler for us to scale and speed.
Speaker A:Yeah, there's a lot of optimism at this conference about AI, I think for that reason.
Speaker A:Would you agree with that?
Speaker B:I agree.
Speaker B:I agree.
Speaker B:I don't see it as a threat.
Speaker B:I see it more as an enabler.
Speaker B:It has to be done in a, in a positive mindset.
Speaker B:What I can share is what we are doing for instance in Danone, to make sure that we are putting it in a positive mindset.
Speaker B:So we use it, as I was saying, an enabler for us to go much faster.
Speaker B:So we're doing a dance skill.
Speaker B:So what it means is we are analyzing every position we have in our organization on a skill based.
Speaker B:Because skills are transferable.
Speaker B:So you can allow people to move across function, to cruise across positions if it is skill based.
Speaker B:So we're doing it.
Speaker B:It's a huge amount of time and it's not done by the HR people.
Speaker B:You know, sometimes it's HR that does the skill mapping.
Speaker B:It is not.
Speaker B:It's really done by functional people who know what am I doing today, what is going to change tomorrow?
Speaker B:How do I project it in three, four years, including with the AI introduction.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:And then we're mapping all these skills and making sure that we are increasing the learning of our people.
Speaker B:We just signed an agreement with Microsoft now to make sure that all our teams at all level of our organization are trained on AI so that, you know, once you have that, people are embracing it, being instead of being anxious about it and, oh, it's gonna take away my job, et cetera.
Speaker B:It is not.
Speaker B:It is going just to give us that speed, that, that scale again, but by bringing our people and skills up across all levels.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Well, thank you very much.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker A:It was a pleasure spending time with you to close out the day, day two of CGF with you in Vienna, Austria.
Speaker A:Thanks to cgf, of course, and to Vuzion for enabling us to bring you great interviews like the one we just did.
Speaker A:And as always, be careful out there.
