Tom Culver

Tom Culver serves as a Senior Innovation Advisor with the Innovation Advisors, a business unit of RTI International. He has over 20 years of strategic advising, innovation management and technology commercialization experience, combined with 10 years of industry experience in advanced materials and industrial technology research and development. Mr. Culver is an experienced innovation strategy advisor and innovation event facilitator, and he routinely consults, teaches, and presents on a wide variety of innovation and emerging technology and foresight topics.

Mr. Culver collaborates and advises innovation, R&D, and new product development teams for Fortune 500 companies like PepsiCo, General Mills, Kraft Heinz, Hershey, SC Johnson, Johnson & Johnson, and Medtronic. As a senior strategic advisor, he has guided federal agency clients like the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) through the development of new open innovation programs and training, and strategic visioning and road mapping efforts, which involved extensive organizational and culture change management. Mr. Culver has broad knowledge of emerging and industrial technology gained over 20 years of technology and innovation research.

Over the last 15 years, Mr. Culver has worked with over a dozen large commercial organizations and has led dozens of projects related to sustainable packaging. He has helped companies across the full packaging value chain for materials developers, converters, consumer products companies and retailers. He has led research teams to find and evaluate technology solutions and market opportunities for sustainable packaging across the full lifecycle from green chemistry and bio-sourced materials to sustainable rigid, flexible packaging manufacturing to established and emerging packaging end of life scenarios.

Mr. Culver received his Bachelor of Science in Optical Engineering from the University of Rochester.