Introducing Miriam Ueberall, Executive Partner

Twenty-five years inside CPG's hardest R&D challenges. Now she's on our side of the table.

Miriam Ueberall was a Pilot Lite client before she was a partner. She saw the model work from the inside, under pressure, when it counted.

The Background That Earns the Room

Miriam spent twenty-five years inside the R&D functions of the world's most demanding CPG organisations. Global R&D Director at Unilever. VP R&D International at Kraft Heinz. Chief R&D Officer at Flora Food Group. She has led innovation across eight countries simultaneously, under real margin pressure, with real accountability for what lands on shelf and what doesn't.

She knows what it looks like when innovation governance breaks down. When internal teams are too close to the problem, too cautious about the answer, or too slow to make the decision that everyone in the room already knows needs to be made. She has managed the tension between scientific rigour and commercial speed that derails most innovation programmes long before a product ever reaches a consumer.

Her Read on the Industry

Her diagnosis of where CPG is right now is direct. The bottleneck is not ideas. Across the organisations she has worked with and worked for, the C-suite is aligned: volume is back as the fundamental metric, AI adoption is outpacing the governance to support it, and execution in complex markets is what separates the companies that grow from the ones that stall. The challenge is not knowing what needs to happen. It is organisations that are too slow, too inward-focused, and too unwilling to say the difficult thing out loud.

On that last point, Miriam is not that person.

"We dare what internal colleagues sometimes don't dare to put on the table. And that's a big sweet spot we are in."

What She Brings

When a Chief R&D Officer is in the conversation, they need someone who has held that brief, who understands formulation constraints, regulatory pressure, and why the gap between a great idea and a launched product so often becomes a graveyard of good intentions. Miriam has sat in that seat. She has also scaled products across genuinely hard markets, which speaks directly to what Pilot Lite does and where we operate.

Why Pilot Lite

What drew her here: a systematic approach that cuts opportunities into the right steps, a model that keeps the consumer at the centre, and a partnership built for the way the world actually works now.

"What I really value about Pilot Lite is the decisiveness — the ability to think in milestones, think in commercial impact, and force clients to make decisions. That's how you drive speed, rigour, and alignment."

Welcome

220 brands. 30 markets. 86% rehire rate. Miriam makes us sharper.

Welcome.