Life Lessons with Yvonne Masters

Growing up, Yvonne Masters had separate influences of food and science in her life. Born and raised in Chicago, Masters had family ties to both worlds: Her grandfather on her mom’s side owned a restaurant in Niles, Ill., while relatives on her dad’s side were scientists, teachers and engineers.

Although Masters wasn’t completely sure what to major in when she enrolled at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, she knew she was interested in science. She had a knack for organic chemistry, which led her to take some food microbiology courses, eventually earning her bachelor’s degree in microbiology.

“Having that science component really made my interest in food science and food safety, especially with microbiology,” Masters said.

From there, she was sold on pursuing a career in food science and safety. As an undergraduate, she worked in two laboratories in the food science and human nutrition and molecular and cellular biology departments, where her responsibilities included washing glassware and autoclaving biohazards.

Although Masters recalled facing difficulty finding an internship, through mentors and networking, she became a quality and operations intern at General Mills’ facility in Carson, Calif. (her first time venturing out of Illinois). She then completed two more internships at Kraft Foods as a quality intern, eventually becoming the category quality leader at the Kraft Heinz Company, where she worked for nearly a decade.

Today, Masters has more than 20 years of experience in the food safety industry and serves as director of food safety and quality policy at John B. Sanfilippo & Son. She earned her master’s degree in food science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and her Ph.D. in food science from Cornell University.

As a leader, she has learned how to connect with different departments within an organization, such as research and development and operations, to ensure food safety remains center focus.

“We have to make sure as food safety and quality professionals that quality and food safety is one of their goals as well,” Masters said. “So, making sure we have regular meetings with them, that any issues that arise, we put food safety at the forefront.”

Fostering a strong food safety culture and communication among FSQA professionals is imperative to Masters’ work. In fact, she co-wrote the food safety culture section in the Peanut and Tree Nut Processors Association safety handbook.

Masters sat down with QA to share more about the lessons learned during her career in food safety and her hopes for the future of the industry.

What I learned in my internships is that it’s not only your knowledge of food safety that’s so important. You have to be able to communicate that in a certain way. Interactions with employees are important. Interactions with leaders at your organization in food safety and other departments are so important.

John B. Sanfilippo & Son gave me the opportunity to really expand my knowledge, because there’s not just one person that focuses on one product category. I have to focus on everything within the company. So not only food safety plans, but also food defense, quality, food fraud, all of it.

As a leader, I had to learn strategy. My manager is very good at that. He’s helped out so much in making sure that you have a really good strategy, really having good foresight of what you need to do to improve food safety. Continuous improvement is very important, having those goals, not only short-term but long-term as well.

The thing is, if one person doesn’t do their job right, especially when it’s a critical food safety area, that’s going to be an issue. So, making sure our whole food safety system, our culture, is all about food safety.

I think it’s important to make sure women are included in food safety [and] they have what they need to navigate some of the things that happen within organizations.

My hope for food safety is we try to make it less complex. Focusing not only on the basics — because everybody has to follow GMPs, everybody has to follow certain food safety controls — but conveying food safety in a way that is very simplified that we get it to a level where it’s not complicating things. We have a lot of requirements. Well, is there any way to make it more clear? What are the things we that we really need to prioritize and focus on? Let’s focus on those and do them really well.