Houtart joins Syngenta from the BBC where he spent 21 years in senior editorial leadership positions. For the last 10 years, he was the BBC Rural Affairs Champion as well as the executive editor for rural affairs, environment, food and natural history where he played a key role in the coverage of rural issues at the BBC, says the group. 

Houtart was responsible for a portfolio of up to 1 000 programmes a year and has earned numerous awards for his productions. He made a name as an environmentalist and sat on the board of King Charles' responsible business network. He is on the advisory board of TABLE, a collaboration between Oxford University and other institutions, working with food system stakeholders to explore the future of food, says Syngenta.

Syngenta says that apart from Houtrt, Alison Tudor-Ackroyd joins Syngenta Group as Head of Digital and Social Media, and will be based in Manchester, the United Kingdom. Tudor-Ackroyd was most recently a Director in the International Communications team for China's largest e-commerce company, Alibaba Group.

Tudor-Ackroyd was also the Managing Editor of its corporate newsroom, Alizila. Before moving into communications, Tudor-Ackroyd was an award-winning multimedia editor with over two decades of experience in journalism at publications including The Wall Street Journal, Reuters and the South China Morning Post, says the group. 

In her career, she has worked as a financial and business correspondent in Tokyo, London, Milan, Paris and Hong Kong. 

Syngenta concludes that working together with Houtart in managing media relations around the world is Beat Werder, Michelle Ng, Violaine Delli (based in Basel, Switzerland), Allen Shapard (Washington D.C., the United States) and Roger Zhang (Shanghai, China). 

For more information, visit www.syngentagroup.com. You can also follow Syngenta Group on LinkedIn, or on X.

*Image courtesy of X