Danone CHRO: ‘People strategy is the business strategy. A company can only grow as fast as it grows its talent’
Isabelle Esser, Chief Human Resources, Research & Innovation, Quality and Food Safety Officer at Danone, sat down for an exclusive interview at UNLEASH World 2025. Read on to find out why HR is the “fabric” of the food and drinks giant.
UNLEASH World | HR Leader Insights
Danone's CEO and CHRO have a strategic alliance - they share the view that the people strategy is the business strategy (and vice versa).
They shared this story at UNLEASH World 2025 in Paris - UNLEASH also sat down for an exclusive conversation with Danone CHRO Isabelle Esser.
Here's why HR is a strategic lever at Danone, and how Esser is thinking about AI, skills and the future of leadership.
€3.6 billion income French multinational food and drinks company Danone’s CHRO, Isabelle Esser, is more than just head of HR – she is also Chief Research & Innovation, Quality and Food Safety Officer.
For Esser, these two sides of her role go hand in hand – they are both about innovation and people.
“We can only serve the consumer, the patient, because we have the right people,” Esser shares.
Her career has been filled with research and development; she’s fascinated by “what people can bring in terms of innovation.”
Having the mindset of curiosity, agility and entrepreneurship are what makes humans special; “you don’t get that from a robot”, notes Esser.
Innovation, AI and HR was among the topics that Esser addressed on stage at UNLEASH World 2025.
She was joined by Danone’s CEO Antoine de Saint-Affrique to share why their close alliance turns strategy into real impact.
At the Paris show, UNLEASH sat down with Esser for an exclusive conversation – read on to find out how she is thinking about the HR topics of the moment: AI, skills and the future of leadership.
‘People strategy is the business strategy’ at Danone
de Saint-Affrique and Esser are not just CEO and CHRO of Danone, they have a personal relationship, having worked together previously at Barry Callebaut and Unilever.
“We trust one another, we have the same values”, as well as agree that “people strategy is the business strategy” (and vice versa), Esser tells UNLEASH.
Ultimately, as Esser said on stage at UNLEASH World, “a company can only grow as fast as it grows its talent.”
She adds in the interview that by taking care and developing people that’s how “the company will grow sustainably and profitably in the future”.
Ultimately, for Esser, “if you don’t grow, if you don’t transform, you become obsolete” – “this is a question of survival”.
Since de Saint-Affrique became Danone CEO four years ago, Danone has been on a mission to return to sustainable, profitable growth. This has been articulated in the company’s ‘Renew’ strategy.
Esser tells UNLEASH: “It was about bringing back financial discipline – it was an executional reset, a culture reset, a performance and leadership reset”.
Danone has seen two years of progress, so the first chapter of ‘Renew’ is complete; the second chapter is underway and it’s about continuing that progress.
To accompany that, Danone is doing workforce planning, as well as “really thinking about skills of the future and leadership of the future”, Esser tells UNLEASH.
“That’s where this [CEO-CHRO] alliance is so critical” – HR truly has a seat at the table, “we co-create the strategy”.
de Saint-Affrique echoed the importance of HR at Danone in the UNLEASH World session – he declared that HR is the “fabric” of the company, they drive the most critical things in the organization, and create the “space in which people will grow and develop”.
Danone CHRO Isabelle Esser & CEO Antoine de Saint-Affrique on stage at UNLEASH World 2025.
AI, skills and leadership: What’s the future of work at Danone?
UNLEASH was keen to find out what’s top of Esser’s HR to-do list for 2026, and looking ahead to 2030.
Continuing to innovate the people strategy remains top of the list; “we need to get the fundamentals completely right – systems, processes, data”.
“A lot of people talk about AI”, and that’s great, but, in Esser’s view, the big is focus is on “how can data and digital bring us insight, and how can we make decisions with our human symbiosis”.
Human-centricity is a major topic for Danone – on stage at UNLEASH World 2025, Danone’s CEO shared that jobs will be changed by AI. Esser was also clear that “AI will never replace humans”. Humans are the ones that will create value.
Also, with her research hat on, Esser’s next big piece of focus is skills – “expertise is absolutely critical. Without expertise, you don’t build for the future”.
Therefore, Esser is focusing on looking at the future skills needed in every single function within Danone.
This includes leadership skills – Danone wants to create “responsible leaders”. Responsibility starts with these leaders knowing themselves, and leading themselves; “you can only lead an organization and teams if you lead yourself”.
Leadership is not something that’s taken, it is something that is given” – “people choose to follow you”.
