Karen McCarty is the Senior Director of Quality Assurance for Agropur U.S. Operations, where she leads a corporate team responsible for all aspects of food safety and quality in Agropur’s U.S. Cheese, Ingredient and Custom Solutions facilities. Prior to joining Agropur, Karen graduated with a B.S. degree in Bacteriology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and has held positions with Deibel Laboratories and Davisco Foods International.

Monty Bohanan currently serves as Associate Director, Sanitation for Leprino Foods, where he drives continuous sanitation improvement efforts. He has more than 36 years of experience in the food industry, including 19+ years of direct food safety and cleaning and sanitation experience. His experience has been primarily in the dairy industry, but he has worked in fruit and juice processing, ready-to-eat, bakery, meat processing, and beverage plants. Monty has a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla. In his career, he has also held Production Management, Process Engineering, R&D Management, Quality Assurance Management, and Applications Engineering positions.

As Vice President of Product Research and Food Safety, Tim leads the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy Food Safety Committee, an active group of food safety expert volunteers from dairy processors and academia that shares best practices across companies, produces guidance documents, and runs training classes which have reached over 4,000 attendees. Tim also coordinates and funds Dairy Foods & Food Safety Research Projects at Universities. Tim has more than 30 years of food R&D experience in leadership roles at Kraft Foods, Sara Lee, Hillshire Brands and the Innovation Center. He has a broad background in food science and engineering, new product innovation, process research, and food safety across a wide variety of products including cheese, milk, sauces and dressings, chilled foods, pasta, ready-to-eat meals, bakery products, and processed meats. Tim is on the board of directors for the Chicagoland Food Science Foundation, the Chicagoland Food and Beverage Network, the editorial board of Food Safety Magazine, is a Certified Food Scientist (CFS), and holds several food processing patents.

Adrienne Blume is Editorial Director of Food Safety Magazine, a BNP Media brand. She has 18+ years of experience in B2B technical media, including the food safety and quality (FSQ) and energy technology sectors. She manages the editorial content for Food Safety Magazine and its podcast, Food Safety Matters, and also serves on the Educational Advisory Board for the annual Food Safety Summit. She keeps a pulse on trends, issues, and regulatory developments in FSQA by attending and moderating sessions at food industry and food safety conferences worldwide. Previously in her career, Ms. Blume launched and led two energy technology publications (H2Tech and Gas Processing & LNG) and a podcast (H2TechTalk) as Editor-in-Chief at Gulf Energy Information in Houston, Texas. She also worked as Managing Editor at Hydrocarbon Publishing Company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She speaks and moderates at technical conferences around the world and is published in several industry journals. Ms. Blume holds an M.A. degree in English and Publishing from Rosemont College in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, as well as B.A. degrees (hons) in English and Anthropology from Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri.