Managing Board

Nadia Lang has been CEO and a delegate of the Board of Directors of the ZFV Group since June 2021. She was elected to the ZVF Board of Directors in 2017 and served as its President from 2019 to 2022.

Nadja Lang’s professional career started in 1999 at The Coca-Cola Company, where she held a number of leadership positions in Brand Management and in the Innovation Department. Subsequently, as European Marketing Manager at General Mills Europe in London and Nyon, she was responsible for brand and innovation strategies and for the successful development and launch of several European products. She worked for Fairtrade Max Havelaar as Commercial Director and Deputy Managing Director from 2005 to 2011, and then as CEO until April 2017. She was responsible in this role for the extremely successful growth strategy. During her time at Max Havelaar she was Chair of the Global Account Management Steering Committee and a member of the Finance Committee of Fairtrade International among other responsibilities.

A business administration graduate, she has broad expertise in the areas of transformation, sustainability, and crisis and stakeholder management. She has also gained further qualifications, specifically in the area of leadership, at IMD in Lausanne (CH), INSEAD in Fontainebleau (FR) and other institutions.

Nadja Lang is a Member of the Board of Directors of the Emmi Group and Pax Life Insurance. She is also involved in a number of committees relating to sustainability and is on the international advisory board of the ZHAW School of Management and Law.

She has also held positions on the Boards of Directors of Swiss Post AG (2014-2023), Metron (2013-2021) and Energie 360° AG (2015-2021).

Raphael Lisser has been CFO at ZFV since December 2022.

He has many years of proven experience in finance, controlling and IT and is very familiar with the catering and retail industry. For more than 15 years, he worked at Migros Group, most recently as Head of Controlling & Finance at Migros Handel Digital. Since 2018, Raphael has been Head of Finance and IT and Deputy Managing Director at Valora Foodservice Switzerland, driving and implementing various digital transformation topics, among others.

Gabriela Dal Santo has been CMO of the ZFV companies since June 2021.

After studying economics at the University of St. Gallen, she started her career at Lindt and then held various management positions in marketing, sales, business development and innovation. Gabriela Dal Santo then spent almost ten years at Disney, where she was responsible for consumer products in Switzerland and for various international clients and projects, before spending four years in charge of global product and innovation management at Ricola. Most recently, Gabriela Dal Santo was Head of Marketing & Customer Experience and a member of the Executive Board at Sanitas Troesch. Her professional experience includes international responsibility for strategic brand management, marketing and communication as well as customer experience with a strong focus on digital transformation and new technologies to create unique customer experiences.

Florian Dübendorfer has been a member of the ZFV Executive Board since August 2022 and is in charge of the entire catering sector with the self-managed restaurants and the more than 140 community catering operations.

He holds a degree in economics from the University of Bern and has many years of proven experience in the catering, food and consumer goods industries. He worked for Coca-Cola Beverages AG for four years and for Unilever Schweiz GmbH for twelve years, the latter as part of the management of Unilever Foodsolutions. As Sales Manager, Florian Dübendorfer was responsible for major customers in the catering industry. Most recently, he worked as Operations Director Public Gastronomy and a.i. Member of the Executive Board at SV Group. In this role, he was also responsible for several major projects in connection with tenders in the public catering sector and successfully drove the expansion of various catering concepts.

Thomas Kleber joined the ZFV Managing Board in July 2017 and is responsible for the management of Sorell Hotels Switzerland.

He is a trained restaurant manager and graduate of the Steigenberg School of Hotel Management in Bad Reichenhall, Germany. As General Manager of restaurants at home and abroad, he has over 34 years of experience. At Cornell University in the USA, he completed further training in various areas in 1993. Most recently, Thomas Kleber was the Area General Manager of the Steigenberg hotel group in Switzerland and Konstanz for two years. Prior to that, he worked as Managing Director and General Manager of prestigious hotels in Switzerland and abroad.

Dario Notaro joined the ZFV Executive Board as CBDO on May 2021. He has been leading a strategic innovation initiative for the company since September 2020.

After studying economics at the University of Zurich and LUISS in Rome, Dario Notaro worked for Gategroup for ten years in various positions. As a member of the M&A team, he accompanied transactions worldwide before taking on business development tasks for an in-house corporate start-up in London. Dario Notaro then took over the management of the Scandinavian Retail segment in Oslo. From 2015 to 2019, he was responsible for operations in Switzerland for the Compass Group and subsequently pursued his own projects. Dario Notaro has completed further training in leadership, innovation and sustainability at IMD in Lausanne and at the University of Cambridge.

 

Angela Tauro was appointed into Managing Board in 1996. She has been the ZFV’s Manager of Human Resources since August 1995. One year before she joined the corporation and was responsible for personnel.

After her Commercial Basic Education, Angela Tauro quickly found her way into the personnel sector. Before joining ZFV, she was active for HOTELA and the Swiss Proprietor Association. In 2000 she attended the BBZ in Weinfelden to complete as personnel specialist with Swiss Federal Certification. In 2013, she completed her post studies in Leadership and Management at the KV Business School in Zürich.