Trustee

Douglas Mesquita Rocha is a Chemical Engineer, with more than 20 years of experience in Research and Development for FMCG and Cosmetics.

He started his career with Unilever Brazil in 2000, working as a formulation Scientist for Laundry Detergents. Soon, he moved towards the fields of evaluation methods in spectrophotometry for textiles, doing extensive research particularly on different methodologies for color and whiteness evaluation. During his 12 years with Unilever, he held different positions in the areas of Formulation, Instrumental Evaluation, Consumer Science, Claims Generation and Project Management, including a 4 year assignment at Unilever R&D Port Sunlight, United Kingdom.

In 2012 Douglas joined Reckitt Benckiser in Brazil, in charge of major regional brands such as Vanish, Finish and Veet.  Due to their remarkable market growth,  he was offered the role of Head of R&D for Central and Eastern Europe, with teams based in Germany and Poland, where he was based until 2015.

In 2015 he accepted a position with L’Oréal, helping to further structure the Research and Innovation organization in Brazil. There, he was also responsible for the consolidation of the Product Performance Evaluation team in the amazing new Rio de Janeiro Campus. His career progressed with LOreal, moving to the USA as Vice-President of the Product Performance Evaluation team. In this capacity, Douglas had responsibility across Consumer, Sensory, Instrumental and Clinical Sciences, leading a diverse organization of around 100 personnel, with PhDs and Engineers across a wide variety of education and work experiences.

Since May 2021 Douglas returned to the world of Laundry and Home Care. Based at the Henkel Headquarters in Dusseldorf, Germany he is currently Global Vice President for R&D Home Care.