The Fearless FSQA Leader: 7 Lessons from Dr. Vera Petrova Dickinson on Innovation, AI, and Building a Safer Food World

When I sat down with Dr. Vera Petrova Dickinson for 30 Food Safety, I didn't just meet another industry veteran—I met someone who's rewriting the rules on what it means to lead in food safety and quality. From her early days under Dr. Cathy Donnelly at the University of Vermont to her leadership roles at Disney, Mondelēz International, Mars Wrigley, Danone, and Serenta Foods, Vera has consistently chosen the path less traveled. Now, as the founder of InnovaQ, she's bringing generative AI to an industry that desperately needs it.

What struck me most wasn't just her impressive resume—it was her unwavering belief that food safety professionals need to stop saying "no" and start asking "why not?"

Lesson 1: Your "Why" Must Extend Beyond Yourself

Vera's journey into food safety started in her mid-20s as a new mother, obsessed with her daughter's health. But it wasn't just about her family—it was about creating broad societal benefit. She considered medical school but found the perfect intersection of impact and innovation in food safety.

"I never wanted to do something that would not bring broad benefit to the surrounding world. Food safety is so profound—you can honestly bring so much value if you're passionate about the field."

The Takeaway: The best FSQA professionals don't just see their work as compliance or risk mitigation. They see it as a calling that protects millions of consumers. When you're fighting budget battles or pushing for innovation, that sense of purpose becomes your anchor.

Lesson 2: Intentionally Seek Learning Over Comfort

Throughout her 20-year corporate career, Vera operated under one principle: her job was to learn. She volunteered for "crazy programs" and stretched herself into unfamiliar territory—including Six Sigma at Mondelēz, a field she knew nothing about at the time.

"For the first 20 years of my career, I always told myself my job was to learn. I was intentionally sticking myself in crazy programs."

Her boss at Mondelēz, Peter Bagg, believed in her and supported her education at DePaul University. That mentorship became a model for the kind of leader Vera aspired to be—one who believes in people "to this extent."

The Takeaway: Don't wait for opportunities to come to you. Volunteer for the projects that scare you. The skills you develop outside your comfort zone will define your career more than the ones you already possess.

Lesson 3: Your Best Mentors Aren't in Food Safety

This might be controversial, but Vera's most fascinating conversations weren't with other FSQA professionals—they were with supply chain leaders and procurement experts. She specifically mentioned Mark DeSchutter, head of procurement at Mondelēz North America, who challenged her to think about quality from a completely different perspective.

"The best mentors and best learnings in general in life come from areas that you're not familiar with."

He brought insights from suppliers, external manufacturers, and raw material partners that fundamentally changed how Vera approached quality.

The Takeaway: Get outside the food safety silo. Have coffee with someone from sales, sit in on a supply chain meeting, shadow your procurement team. These cross-functional relationships will expand your thinking in ways no food safety conference ever could.

Lesson 4: Every Fall Is Practice for Standing Higher

When I asked Vera about mistakes and regrets, her answer floored me. She recently presented at the University of Texas specifically on failures and lessons learned, and she honestly couldn't think of one specific regret—not because she hasn't failed, but because she views every setback as preparation for what comes next.

"If you don't fall, you really don't have the opportunity to stand up back again but stand up higher, learning something, getting better. Every time I fall, it's almost like pause—okay, that was good. It's like a punch in the face. It woke me up and taught me something, and I'm going to be even more fearless after that."

She went further: "Everything had to happen the way that it happened because it prepared me to be here right now—to become the fearless leader who stands up really firmly on two feet, fighting for the things that I believe in proudly."

The Takeaway: Resilience isn't about avoiding failure—it's about reframing it. The next time a project doesn't go as planned or an initiative gets shut down, pause and ask: "What did this teach me?" That mindset shift is the difference between stagnation and growth.

Lesson 5: Food Safety's Biggest Weakness Is Its Fear of Innovation

If Vera has one regret—not for herself, but for the industry—it's that food safety remains a deeply conservative function. While understandable given the responsibility we hold for consumer health, this conservatism has become a barrier.

"I wish we had more appetite for innovation and for change. We're just such a conservative function. Understandably we have to be because we're responsible for their health, but there are ways to do it safely. Innovation doesn't have to be reckless."

For every one person who said "yes" to her suggestions for change, Vera faced 100 "nos" explaining why it wouldn't work.

The Takeaway: Start small. Pilot programs exist for exactly this reason. Test an AI tool at one plant. Try a new monitoring system in one production line. Prove the concept, then scale. Agile deployment works, but only if you take the first step.

Lesson 6: AI Isn't Coming to Replace You—It's Coming to Amplify You

The biggest fear around AI in food safety is job displacement. Vera's perspective is refreshingly different. She sees AI as a co-pilot, not a replacement—a tool that eliminates waste, reduces inefficiency, and frees humans to focus on value-added activities.

Consider this: a 2024 study found that the average U.S. manufacturer loses 20-40% of their revenue due to wasted activities and physical waste. Think about all the downtime, the dispersed data systems, the delayed responses when something goes wrong on the line.

"Imagine a floor where folks are actually engaged in activities when they know what to do, when they're supported with AI to do their job that much more effectively. It's a happy workplace—that's what it becomes."

Vera's hot take? AI will completely change how we look at food safety and quality. She envisions continuous auditing through AI-analyzed video feeds, real-time alerts when critical-to-quality parameters drift, and predictive analytics that catch issues before they become problems.

"AI is going to completely change the way that we look at food safety and quality. At some point we need to look at it as a financial advisor looks at the market performance—it needs to happen continuously."

The Takeaway: Stop thinking of AI as a threat and start thinking of it as your administrative assistant, your data analyst, and your early warning system rolled into one. The question isn't whether to adopt it—it's how quickly you can start.

Lesson 7: The New Generation Won't Take "No" for an Answer—and That's Beautiful

When we talked about the future, Vera's face lit up. Her 24-year-old daughter, her team at InnovaQ (split between mid-career professionals and recent graduates), the students she meets at conferences—they all share something the older generation often lacks: an unwillingness to accept the status quo.

"I look at my daughter, I look at my team at InnovaQ—they just have the mentality of 'why can't we?' Tell me 100 reasons why I can't, because I believe in it, because I've seen technology or process work somewhere else. Yes we can—that's our slogan."

Technology is their second language. They grew up with it. And they're not intimidated by titles or experience levels that might have silenced previous generations.

The Takeaway for Young Professionals: Don't get intimidated by the older generation. Yes, experience has merit, but couple that experience with your fresh perspective. Ask "why" relentlessly. Explore new ways. The industry needs your voice.

The Takeaway for Experienced Leaders: Be kind to those questions. Support the exploration. The most incredible things happen when you combine deep experience with fearless curiosity.

The Regulatory Complexity Problem (And Why AI Solves It)

Throughout our conversation, Vera repeatedly circled back to one of food safety's most persistent challenges: regulatory complexity. When she worked at Mondelēz, they operated in 140 countries. That's 140 different regulatory footprints, each with slightly different interpretations of similar concepts.

Managing that required expensive subject matter experts on the ground, endless meetings to understand how different regulations applied to specific products and manufacturing lines, and an inflated organizational design that strained budgets.

"One of the products we just launched actually plays to that weakness and helps global companies navigate these compliance requirements with ease. This is where generative AI comes about and shines."

The Takeaway: If you're struggling to justify AI adoption to leadership, start here. Calculate how much your organization spends on regulatory compliance—the salaries, the consultants, the meetings, the mistakes. Then show them how AI can compress that complexity into seconds, not weeks.

My Biggest Surprise: The "Continuous Auditing" Vision

One of Vera's most provocative ideas was around continuous auditing. Many plants already have video cameras for food defense programs. What if AI could analyze those feeds continuously, catching issues in real-time—someone not changing gloves properly, a potential contamination event, even intentional malicious activity?

"Can you imagine if we didn't have to do all the audits but just demonstrate to the auditor or customer your control points that are trustworthy—not once a year validation of your process, but continuous validation?"

She acknowledged this is controversial—privacy concerns are real—but the technology exists. The question is whether we're brave enough to pilot it.

The Takeaway: The most important innovations often live in the "controversial but valuable" zone. Don't dismiss ideas because they make you uncomfortable. Explore the ethical boundaries, test the concept, and see where it leads.

Resources for FSQA Professionals Who Want to Learn About AI

When I asked Vera where food safety professionals should start learning about AI, her answer was counterintuitive but brilliant:

Step 1: Surround yourself with innovators. She moved to Austin specifically to be around people for whom AI is just part of the language—VR company founders, gaming entrepreneurs, UT professors.

Step 2: Go to the source. You won't find profound AI innovation in food safety yet because we don't specialize in AI. Follow the top companies—OpenAI, Anthropic, Google's AI divisions. Subscribe to AI newsletters. Learn from the best, then apply it to your domain.

Step 3: Just start using AI tools. Vera was surprised by how few people leverage ChatGPT or similar tools in their daily work.

"Lean in. Try new things. The technology saves you so much time—why wouldn't you do it?"

The Takeaway: Stop waiting for someone to create "AI for Food Safety Professionals 101." Start with the tools available today. Use ChatGPT to draft your HACCP plan, ask it to analyze your audit findings, have it generate training materials. Build the muscle. The applications will become obvious.

What InnovaQ Is Doing (And Why It Matters)

Vera founded InnovaQ because after decades in the industry, she was desperately looking for better ways to govern food safety and quality—and couldn't find anyone who understood what she needed.

"The frustration and the gap that I've seen that food safety professionals deal with on a daily basis was so obvious to me. I thought, well, if there's nobody providing this, I will do it myself."

InnovaQ's mission: modernize product quality for a safer world by bringing generative AI and data analytics to manufacturing. They started with food and beverage, focusing on two core problems:

1. Simplifying regulatory complexity – Helping companies embed compliance in their products and processes with ease
2. Unifying dispersed data – Creating one application that becomes your hub for everything quality-related, pulling together data that's currently scattered across quality systems, HR, manufacturing lines, and more

They offer real-time insights when critical-to-quality parameters drift, immediate recommendations based on FDA requirements, and predictive forecasting to catch issues before they materialize.

One product, the InnovaQ Knowledge Center for FDA compliance, is open to the public with a free demo at innovaqual.com.

The Takeaway: The tools exist today. The technology is here. The only question is whether you're ready to lean in.

My Final Thoughts

Walking away from this conversation, I kept thinking about one thing: fearlessness. Not reckless fearlessness, but the kind that comes from falling down, getting back up, and learning something new each time. The kind that says, "Yes, I'm responsible for consumer safety, but that doesn't mean I can't innovate."

Vera embodies a new kind of FSQA leader—one who respects experience but doesn't worship it, who sees AI as a co-pilot rather than a threat, and who genuinely believes the next generation will push this industry forward in ways we can't yet imagine.

If you're an early-career professional reading this, take heart: your questions matter, your fresh perspective is valuable, and the industry needs your fearless curiosity more than ever.

If you're a seasoned leader, remember: the mentor who believed in Vera's potential changed her entire trajectory. Who can you believe in today? What crazy program can you invite someone to volunteer for?

And if you're anywhere in between, start small. Pick one AI tool to try this week. Have one conversation with someone outside your silo. Pilot one innovation in one location. Build the muscle of saying "why not?" instead of "no."

Because as Vera reminded me, whoever adopts technology the fastest will be ahead of the curve. The question isn't whether AI is coming to food safety—it's whether you'll be leading the charge or playing catch-up.

The food safety world Vera envisions—with real-time monitoring, predictive analytics, continuous validation, and empowered frontline workers—isn't science fiction. It's happening right now. The only question is: are you ready to be part of building it?

Want to connect with Vera and explore InnovaQ's tools? Check out their free demo at innovaqual.com or reach out to learn more about how AI can transform your quality processes.

Interested in being featured on 30 Food Safety? We're looking for innovative FSQA professionals—and yes, even leaders from other industries who can teach us something new. Let's have a conversation.