Melanie Neumann, Esq.
Melanie Neumann is Vice President of Crisis Management and General Counsel for RQA, Inc. RQA is a global leader in crisis management and product recall and retrieval services, quality assurance and strategic product development to the food and beverage, consumer products and pharmaceutical industries.
Melanie provides a variety of pre-incident recall and crisis management planning and training services, as well as emergency incident response consulting services to her clients. Services include benchmark reviews of recall plans and consumer complaint handling procedures, as well as facilitation of full day, interactive crisis simulations where companies’ key team members and support personnel are “put through their paces” in a simulated, yet “real-to-life” incident involving one or more of its products in order to see how well the organization’s recall or other relevant plan works in action. Melanie speaks at numerous tradeshows, conferences and seminars throughout the United States and Canada regarding best practices in recall management and the legal, regulatory and media communications considerations that accompany such crises.
Prior to joining RQA, Inc., Melanie gained significant industry experience as corporate legal counsel with major multi-national food companies. Most recently, Melanie was an attorney with The Schwan Food Company where she served on the core recall team and counseled the company on food law, recall, contracts and intellectual property matters. She held similar positions with Hormel Foods Corporation and with the Minneapolis, MN law firm of Fredrikson & Byron. Melanie graduated magna cum laude from William Mitchell College of Law. She is a certified Food Defense Coordinator and is pursuing a Master’s degree in Food Safety from Michigan State University.
