Melanie Whitman is RQA’s Vice President, Crisis & Risk Management and leads all consulting, program development, training and auditing for their clients across the range of industries served. She has more than 25 years of deep industry experience covering food and consumer products. She is responsible for RQA’s relationships with Product Recall, Foodborne Illness and Business Continuity Insurance Carriers, and her team is responsible for 24/7 hotline incident response for insureds. Melanie is a Lead Instructor for FDA’s FSMA PCQI for Human and Animal Food, Intentional Adulteration / Vulnerability Assessment, Food Traceability Rule, and Foreign Supplier Verification Program trainings.

Prior to joining RQA in 2015, Melanie was Global Operations Corporate Compliance Manager for Wolverine Worldwide, and Senior Manager, Integrity & Compliance at Cabela’s Incorporated. She held roles of increasing responsibility at Diageo North America, including Risk Manager, Business Continuity and Auditing and Supply Quality Specialist. Over the course of her career, she was responsible for risk management and factory audit programs in the Americas, supervised internal and third-party response teams in responding to customer, in-market and manufacturing quality concerns, and led product recall planning and corporate response. She has developed and delivered training programs for instructors, employees and managers on safety, security, risk assessment, Code of Conduct, and other topics. Melanie has directed strategy and operations for teams globally and been responsible for benchmarking level assessments to gain insight, inform, and align resources for corporate compliance strategy.

Melanie holds an undergraduate degree in Organizational Leadership and an MBA in Consulting, Operations, and Innovation and Technology. She is a Certified HACCP Auditor (CHA/FSQA), Certified Manager of Quality / Organizational Excellence (CMQ/OE), and a Certified Quality Improvement Associate (CQIA) from the American Society for Quality.