Kris Vasallo is a proud alumna of Monash University in Victoria, Australia where she finished her Master of Food Science and Agribusiness as one of its pioneering students.

She shares her expertise in food safety and product innovation by helping small farming communities and micro, small, medium enterprises (MSME) in the Philippines. In 2021, she worked with CAFEi in Catmon, Cebu where she developed a food safety and shelf-life training module for Kabog Millet (endemic grain in the island and drought-resilient crop) farming community which was funded by the World Food Systems Center at ETH Zurich. She continues to support rural development and communities that are involved in farming indigenous crops by provision of capacity-building activities that strengthens the farmers’ knowledge on food safety and postharvest management. She also provides product development, brand management and omnichannel marketing strategy trainings to micro, small and medium enterprises to help them be more competitive in the local and global market.

Kris also worked with multinational companies in the areas of research and business development. In 2014 to 2016, she worked for Del Monte Philippines, Inc. where her focus is on product development of packaged fruit products for the Philippines, Middle East, and Europe markets. Her other responsibilities also include the conduct of shelf-life studies, consumer acceptability tests and creation of technical documents (e.g. nutritional information panel, claims and label development, HACCP plan). In 2022, she joined back the company in a new role as the Quality Assurance Supervisor for the Dairy Processing Operations. She also worked for SGS Philippines, Inc. from 2016 to 2019 as a Technical Sales Specialist for the Mindanao operations of the Agriculture, Food and Life sector. During her time with SGS, she spearheaded several business development projects (e.g. sensory evaluation trainings, cacao grading) involving capacity-building of MSMEs in the cacao and seafood sector with close collaboration with industry organizations and local government agencies such as the Department of Trade and Industry.