Matt Wilson is an experienced senior leader who has worked in Europe, Asia and Oceania in both developing and developed markets. Most recently, he spent four years as Managing Director of DB Breweries, a Top 100 organisation by revenue and operating profit and one of the largest FMCG companies in New Zealand.

In this role Matt had responsibility for the leadership and performance of DB Group companies.  He was responsible for revitalising DB’s portfolio, achieving outstanding results across key brands.

Matt has extensive non-profit governance experience; he served as Co-Chair of the Vietnam Business Council for Sustainable Development and served on the Advisory Board of the NZ Sustainable Business Council.

Matt will join the Bioeconomy Science Institute in February 2026 and will be based primarily at the Mt Albert Research Centre in Auckland.

Yogesh Anand has more than 25 years’ experience in digital transformation, technology management, security and governance. He has spent the past five years at the New Zealand Transport Agency – Waka Kotahi, most recently as Delivery Lead for their National Ticketing Solution, a $500 million project to deliver a single public transport ticketing solution for the whole of New Zealand.

Yogesh has worked in public and private sector organisations across the globe delivering digital transformation solutions, including the Inland Revenue Department, Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. He is a member of both the New Zealand and Malaysian Institutes of Directors.

Yogesh will join the Institute in January 2026 and will be based at the Science New Zealand hub in Wellington.

Roger Bourne is a career-long advocate for the New Zealand primary sector, beginning his career as an agribusiness journalist before joining the Crown Research Institutes in 2005. Since then, he has held multiple communication, commercial and strategy roles within Plant & Food Research (and in the legacy organisation HortResearch), with his most recent role Director of Strategy, Brand & Impacts.

Roger led the establishment of the brand position and communications approach for Plant & Food Research as a new institute post the merger of HortResearch and Crop & Food Research in 2008. An important aspect of this was successfully drawing on the passion of staff across the two legacy organisations to create a new vision, story and promise for stakeholders, and taking that to customers, New Zealand and the world.

Roger works from our Mt Albert Research Centre (Auckland) and will step into his new role immediately.