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Gilbert, Arizona (1/23/10) – Today Wisdom Natural Brands™, manufacturer of SweetLeaf Stevia® Sweetener, named Charles (Chuck) Marble to the position of Chief Operating Officer. In this capacity, Marble will be responsible for driving all operational aspects for Wisdom Natural Brands’™, including revenue growth, customer and vendor engagement, product roadmap and corporate development. He will report directly to Wisdom Natural Brands™ Founder and CEO, James May.
"Chuck is a proven leader with a wealth of relevant experience and a record of tremendous achievement. We believe he is the ideal person to assume this key position within our growing company. In his new role, he will work directly with me to further improve business operations and to help accelerate the on-the-ground execution of key priorities that are critical to building our brand,” said James May.
Notes Marble, “I am delighted to join Wisdom Natural Brands™ and I look forward to leveraging my industry experience to grow the company’s SweetLeaf Stevia® Sweetener and Wisdom of the Ancients® brands. I plan to focus my efforts on streamlining operations and expanding market share through a variety of structured and innovative initiatives which will position our proprietary stevia and yerba maté products for rapid growth.”
During his 25-year career in the food industry, Marble has held numerous positions of increasing responsibility, including sales and marketing, plant operations and executive management. He most recently served as Executive Vice President North America of Barbara’s Bakery, a division of Weetabix Cereals UK. He is credited with significantly improving brand awareness through a unique blend of innovation, sales strategy and operational leveraging.
Marble holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Food Science from Cornell University and a Master of Business Administration from Lake Forest Graduate School of Management. He currently serves on the Cornell University Food Science Advisory Council.
For more information on Wisdom Natural Brands™ and SweetLeaf Stevia® Sweetener, please visit www.sweetleaf.com.
NOTES TO EDITORS
About SweetLeaf Stevia®
It all started with one man who had a dream – Jim May, Founder of Wisdom Natural Brands™.
Stevia is a naturally sweet herb native to Paraguay that has been consumed for centuries. After tasting stevia leaves given to him by a Peace Corps worker, May made it his mission to bring the extract from the deliciously sweet plant to the United States. May is world known as “The Father of Stevia.” The process involves taking the highest-quality leaves of the stevia plant and extracting their naturally sweet taste with only cool, purified water – no chemicals, solvents or additives that adulterate and cover up the great taste created by nature.
May first traveled to Paraguay to import stevia in 1982. His most satisfying victory came in 2008, when GRAS Associates and Life Science Research Office, two completely independent panels of scientists, awarded SweetLeaf Stevia® GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) status, pursuant to FDA regulations. This allowed SweetLeaf™ products made from its new, revolutionary extraction technology to be labeled as sweeteners. SweetLeaf™ could finally use the word “sweet” to describe its product, now known as SweetLeaf Sweetener®.
FDA regulations allow companies to independently determine, through a self-affirmation process performed by highly qualified scientists, that an ingredient is generally recognized as safe by qualified food science experts. The FDA granted a no-questions letter to SweetLeaf™'s GRAS status in 2009, validating all the hard work done by May over more than a quarter of a century.
Wisdom Natural Brands™, a leading U.S. manufacturer of stevia products, offers SweetLeaf Sweetener® in convenient double-serving packets. SweetLeaf Sweetener® is sold in boxes containing either 50 or 100 packets. Each packet replaces two teaspoons of sugar. SweetLeaf™ is also sold in the SweetLeaf Stevia Plus® Shaker Bottle for easy home use and SweetLeaf SteviaTabs™ Dissolvable Tablets for easy on-the-go use.
Today, May is a leading expert on stevia and travels across the Americas promoting the benefits of the stevia plant.
For more information, visit www.WisdomNaturalBrands.com.
About Wisdom Natural BrandsTM
Gilbert, Arizona based Wisdom Natural BrandsTM is the parent company of two highly respected consumer brands, SweetLeaf Stevia® and Wisdom of the Ancients® herbal teas. The company, in cooperation with scientists in South America, spent nearly two years developing a new and advanced processing methodology using only purified water from start to finish for the extraction of the sweet glycosides from stevia leaves in preparation for the launch of SweetLeaf Sweetener®. This all natural sugar alternative is the best-tasting in the industry and has zero calories, zero carbohydrates and zero glycemic index. For recipes, comparison charts with artificial sweeteners and more information, go to www.SweetLeaf.com. |
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