AgTech 11

Howard Chao 

howard@dooncapital.com

Howard Chao is both a startup investor and an event organizer.

Howard makes investments in early stage tech companies through his personal vehicle, Doon Capital, usually in collaboration with his network of institutional investors. He maintains close working relationships with various venture funds and strategic investors in each of his focus areas. Most of Howard's activities are in auto|mobility tech, ag|food tech, legal|reg tech, fintech and crypto.

Howard is also a Managing Director and primary shareholder of Doon Insights, a startup and technology events company that hosts invitation-only, highly curated workshops and salons for startups, financial investors and corporates at his ranch in the Santa Cruz mountains.

He began his work life as a corporate lawyer with O'Melveny & Myers and for many years was the Chair of the Firm's Asia Practice. He helped establish the firm's offices in Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Beijing, and practiced for many years as a cross-border investment specialist based in Asia. Since 2001 Howard has been based in Silicon Valley, but has continued to do business in the Asia markets.

Paimun Amini

paimun.amini@bayer.com

As the Director of Venture Investments for Bayer's Leaps team, PJ drives the development and execution of a broad partnership strategy that accelerates Bayer's innovation in the Food & Ag space. Coming from a scientific background and the frontlines of digital innovation, PJ and his colleagues have filtered through hundreds of companies with the potential to have a major impact on the future of agriculture and our food supply moving the focus of Agriculture from simply producing MORE to producing BETTER. Growth stage agnostic (Seed – Series C), the Leaps organization facilitates investments, partnerships, and collaborations between emerging companies and the broader Bayer enterprise.

PJ joined Bayer Crop Science in 2011 and has held various leadership roles across the R&D and IT organizations; prior to which he was conducting research for the USDA. PJ has both a bachelor's degree in Biology and an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis.

Adam Bergman

adam@ecotechcap.com

Adam Bergman is a Managing Director at EcoTech Capital where he works at the intersection of technology innovation and climate change. Adam is a sustainability executive leader with over 25 years' investment banking experience raising capital and executing M&A transactions. He also provides strategic advice and financial guidance to senior executives and boards on partnerships and growth strategies. As one of the first investment bankers to focus exclusively on the CleanTech sector, starting in 2005, Adam is recognized as a leading subject matter expert and is a frequent speaker at industry events and publisher of articles on sustainability.

Adam has built industry leading AgTech investment banking practices at Citi and Wells Fargo by creating a broad ecosystem to help drive adoption of technology and innovation throughout the food & ag value chain. Adam established the AgTech cohort for Wells Fargo's innovation incubator (IN2), which was launched at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri, in 2018. He sits on the technology advisory board for the Danforth Plant Science Center, as well as the Western Growers Association, which represents local and regional family farmers who grow over half the nation's fresh fruits, vegetables and tree nuts. Adam is also a technology advisor for farmer-owned Landus Cooperative, headquartered in Ames, Iowa and SeaAhead, a bluetech startup platform in Boston, Massachusetts, whose mission is to support new, innovative ventures, with a focus on sustainability and the oceans.

Adam has a B.A. in Political Science from Johns Hopkins University, where he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. Additionally, he holds an M.A. in International Development from the International University of Japan. Adam lives in San Francisco, California with his wife and two children.

Danny Bernstein

danny@hawktower.com

Danny Bernstein is the Managing General Partner of HawkTower, a new, early-stage venture capital firm focused on Underleveraged California.

Prior to HawkTower, Danny spent 20 years in Silicon Valley, holding executive roles at Google and Microsoft. Danny successfully sold Meebo, a Sequoia Capital-backed Web 2.0 startup, to Google in 2012. At Google, he ran business development, strategic partnerships, and developer programs for products like Google Search, Google Assistant, Google Research, Chrome/Web Platform (Accelerated Mobile Pages and Progressive Web Apps), Google+, Google Identity and Sign-In, Firebase, and other products. At Microsoft, led critical product lines for Microsoft Teams.

Michael Bommarito

mike@krucible.ai

Mike is a serial entrepreneur and investor with over 20 years of experience in the financial, legal, and technology industries. He has worked with the world's largest banks, governments, law firms, asset managers, technology companies, and reinsurers, spanning roles in strategy, technology, operations, and finance. His research has been published in scientific journals, law reviews, and mainstream media, including Science, Physica A, and the New York Times.

Prior to founding 273 Ventures, Mike previously co-founded and successfully exited LexPredict, a legal A.I. company, and thereafter served as Vice President of Data Products at the acquirer, Elevate.

Jason Book

jason@coastalcorpdev.com

Jason Book is a corporate development consultant and angel investor to early-stage startups in the health, wellness, fitness, climate tech, ag|food tech, cannabis, and related spaces with nearly 30 years of experience, particularly in brand-centric CPG companies.

Jason also serves as a principal advisor to and investor in Revelry Supply, Inc., a consumer accessories brand tailored to the bohemian outdoor lifestyle enthusiast with a unique multistate asset-light licensing model. His extensive nonprofit experience includes serving on the BOD of the DigitalNest from 2015 and 2022 where he was instrumental in scaling the organization. Previously, he was the then-youngest Chairman of the Board of Goodwill Central Coast from 2012 to 2015.

Jason is also an Executive In Residence with HawkTower, a new, early-stage venture capital firm focused on Underleveraged California. He began his career as a corporate lawyer in a boutique practice with his father Dennis in Santa Cruz, California where he acquired significant business transactional, corporate finance, and M&A experience in connection with companies such as CrossFit, Santa Cruz Organics, SunOpta, Surftech, and Rhino Toys, among others.

Jason was part of the pre-Looker startup ecosystem in Santa Cruz, and his passion for connecting early-stage entrepreneurs with advisors and investors and catalyzing the entrepreneurial community has fueled his career.

Mark Brooks

mark.brooks@fmc.com

Mark Brooks is the Managing Director of FMC Ventures, the venture capital arm of FMC Corporation. He began his career as a climatologist, conducting research at the intersection of climate and agriculture. Mark co-founded two startups, with one breaking into the top 3% of all Internet traffic, and the other developing transformative tools for ag producers. Later, at AICPA, he led corporate innovation and M&A, establishing the first corporate venturing program in the accounting industry and earning a "20 Under 40" accolade.

Preceding FMC, he spent nearly three years on the investment team of Syngenta Group Ventures. Mark's interests span AgTech and ClimateTech. He has served and currently serves on numerous startup boards. He is a North Carolina native and based in the Research Triangle Park. Mark earned a B.S. in Meteorology and an MBA in Entrepreneurship from North Carolina State University.

Alfonso Bustamante Canny

abc@cfi.com.pe

Alfonso Bustamante Canny is CEO and founding partner of CFI Holdings S.A., a private holding company with interests in energy, land development and agriculture.

In financial services, he participates as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Consejeros, a Peruvian insurance broker, and as Member of the Investment Committee of SUMMA Investment Fund.

In the food industry sector, Mr. Bustamante is founding Chairman of Cerro Prieto Group, an integrated producer, packer and exporter of fresh produce. He also participates as Member of the Board of Directors in Agrícola Chapi and Quijas.

In the energy sector, Mr. Bustamante is a founding partner of Huaura Power Group and Colca Solar, leading hydroelectric and solar projects located at the north of Lima. He is also an Independent Director of Calidda.

He is an active business leader serving as President of the National Confederation of Private Business Institutions (CONFIEP): Member of the Board of Directors of the Foreign Trade Society of Peru (COMEXPERU); the Chilean Peruvian Business Council, and the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). He also was President of the Pacific Alliance Business Council and Chair of APEC CEO Summit 2016.

Winner of the EOY Perú 2021 Business Leader of Change Award organized by EY and the newspaper El Comercio.

Bachelor of Business Administration from Boston University's School of Management.

Christian Butzke

cbutzke@purdue.edu

Dr. Butzke, a native of West Berlin, is Purdue's first SUFIE, the Senior University Fellow for Innovation & Entrepreneurship out of its Office of Research, who leads faculty teams of seasoned collegiate I&E Fellows and departmental I&E Ambassadors across the university system to foster an academic culture of innovation and entrepreneurship that elevates the societal impact of Purdue's use-inspired research. He is also a professor of food science and enology (the science of wine) in Purdue's College of Agriculture, and an award-winning faculty entrepreneur. He is a past-president of the American Society for Enology and Viticulture, the winemakers' professional guild, and was chief judge of the Indy International, the largest scientifically organized and independent wine competition in the US. 

Having taught more than 10,000 undergraduate students, he was inducted into Purdue's Book of Great Teachers as a faculty member "who has devoted his life to excellence in teaching and scholarship". A former faculty member of the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology, he is the co-founder of the Joint Burgundy-California-Oregon Winemaking Symposia, served on the managing committee for the wine industry's largest conference, the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, and has been an award-winning commercial winemaker. He is co-founder and chief enologist of the Purdue-based startup VinSense, a software company that provides vineyard management decision-support through real-time, high-resolution functional soil maps, modeling of soil and climate effects on fruit composition and quality, and powerful analytics and visualization tools. He has three awesome daughters.

Paola De Almeida

paola.diem@gmail.com

Paola is a seasoned strategy, innovation and transformation officer with more than 20 years in the consumer-packaged goods (CPG) and consulting industries, now focused on value creation, mutual sustainable solutions and the frontiers and resilience of human systems. For the last 4 years, she was the Chief Innovation Officer for Mars, Inc and is well recognized for her fluent ability to bring the outside in, articulating the next generation of needs and tactical solutions, which can be seen throughout her career at Mars, having spent it developing and implementing strategic plans, M&A integration, insights and intelligence analysis, global governance methodology, next generation capabilities, and managing external partnerships, including the United Nations (Food and Agriculture Organization, World Food Programme and World Health Organization), World Bank and African Union. She is also a highly experienced systems thinker, known as a skilled network orchestrator, managing multi-stakeholders in public and private networks, deploying multi-disciplinary change in large-scale programs. Her current focus is in helping broad acceleration and scale up of Sustainable Development Goals solutions across multiple sectors and stakeholders. Paola is a dual citizen from Brazil and the US, and holds an undergraduate degree in Economics and Anthropology from Rutgers University, as well as graduate degrees in Project Management (Lehigh University), Negotiation and Strategic R&D Management (both from INSEAD).

Rob Dongoski

rob.dongoski@kearney.com

Rob Dongoski, Partner at Kearney and global lead of Kearney's AgriFood sector, brings 25+ years of knowledge and experience across the food system to his clients.

With a focus on strategy and innovation, he's led some of the industry's most iconic mergers and developed break-through business model designs and partnerships. His involvement spans large corporates, investors and start up communities.

Keith Driver

keith.driver@tyson.com

Keith may be the most unlikely person to ever be considered as a farmer. From insects to aquaculture, Keith spends his time focussed on the more obscure and emerging areas of agriculture. Though his family office, Propel Ventures, Keith is working and investing in non-conventional, indoor and innovative agriculture with a belief that they form a healthy part of the solution for meeting the demands to feed a growing population.

Keith Driver is a serial entrepreneur in the clean-tech, health-tech and ag-techs spaces, with experience across North America. He has served in leadership positions in several technology companies over the past 20 yrs. His experience includes founding, senior marketing, technical and management roles, focused on emerging products and technologies. This has included fish farms, carbon trading, used oil re-refining, health services, animal feed production, insect production and fertilizer manufacturing.

Keith volunteers his time on the boards of BioAlberta, Ringette Calgary, and Ringette Alberta. He also volunteers as a mentor with the Creative Destruction Labs (Rockies – Agriculture and UBC – Climate), the A100 and imYEG.

Currently, Keith serves as the Project Director for the joint venture between Tyson and Protix, as well as CEO of a carbon investment fund. Keith holds two degrees in engineering and an MBA, and has served as a sessional instructor for both Entrepreneurship and Carbon Finance at his Alma Mater's, the University of Calgary and University of Guelph, as well as the University of Western Ontario.

Walt Duflock

wduflock@wga.com

Walt Duflock is a partner at a 5th generation family farming operation in Monterey County that grows specialty crops, wine grapes, and cattle. Walt has 30 years of experience at Silicon Valley tech startups with sales and marketing executive roles at eBay and 3 others that were acquired. Walt helped build THRIVE into the #1 AgriFoodTech Accelerator and is currently the VP of Innovation at Western Growers.

Elliott Grant

elliottbgrant@gmail.com

ELLIOTT GRANT works at the intersection of technology and agriculture, and has led the development and commercialization of multiple breakthrough technologies in the global food system. In 2017 Dr. Grant joined Google[X] to lead the development of foundational AI for agriculture, and in 2023 became CEO of Mineral - one of Alphabet's "Other Bets". He currently serves on the Boards of SunWorld International and the International Fresh Produce Association.

Prior to joining Google, he was the CEO of ShopWell Labs, a pioneer of personalized nutrition; the founding CEO of HarvestMark, a world leader in food traceability; and the Vice Chair of the Produce Marketing Association.

He is named inventor on more than fifty US Patents and invented - then open-sourced - the VoiceCode which is a traceability standard on every case of fresh produce in N. America. Grant earned his PhD in Engineering from Cambridge University.

Stephen Haggerty

s.haggerty@interiorlinesadvisory.com

Steve currently resides in the Hudson Valley, NY where he is a hobby farmer and the head of Interior Lines Research, LLC, a firm focusing on Wall Street analyst training and venture capital advisory work in the AgTech and E-mobility sectors.

Previously, Steve led Research teams around the world for both Buyside and sellside organizations. He spent over 18 years at Merrill Lynch/BofA as an analyst and Research Manager in New York and Hong Kong. He also headed Research at Moon Capital Management LP, an equity Hedge Fund.

Steve began his financial services career as an automotive analyst at Schroders Securities in London.

Before becoming a sellside analyst, Steve had a corporate career working in planning and operations at General Motors and automotive forecasting at Chase Econometrics.

Joshua T. Hofheimer

jhofheimer@sidley.com

Joshua Hofheimer is the co-leader of Sidley Austin's Global Agribusiness and Food industry group, which has consistently been recognized as a Band 1 "Global Market Leader" in this sector by Chambers Global for nine consecutive years. Josh combines two decades of corporate, commercial, and technology law practice with the experience of having run a public company to bring his clients focused, practical counsel to help them grow their business and maximize their value and returns.

Joshua's work spans a broad array of technology, intellectual property, and strategic commercial transactions. He advises innovators and entrepreneurs, investors, and farmland funds, and his technology experience includes crop inputs, biologics, peptides, genetics and gene editing, synthetic biology for proteins, fats and oils, precision fermentation, digital ag tools, services and drone systems. Joshua has negotiated research, funding and commercialization agreements, licenses and technology spin-outs, as well as developed strategies to exploit proprietary products growing out of the research programs of agri-tech and bio-tech clientele. He also advises clients on general corporate matters and capital raising.

Joshua is a frequent speaker at industry conferences on issues shaping the Ag|Food Tech sector. He is also a long-time member of the Advisory Board for the Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy at UCLA Law School.

Charles Holmes

charles@germin8ventures.com

Charles, an Associate at Germin8 Ventures, supports the senior leadership with investing, operations, strategy, and support of portfolio companies. Charles' respect for and desire to serve enterprising founders driving transformational change in food and agriculture began in Oregon's Wallowa Valley where he grew up surrounded by stewards of land and livestock and bore witness to winning business models, holistic resource management, and successful technology adoption. Charles applies his technical and sector knowledge to support Germin8's mission to effect a positive transformation of the global food system.

Prior to Germin8, Charles served as Manager of Farm Innovation, M&A and Strategic Partnerships for Sensei Ag, a controlled environment agricultural producer, Investments Lead at Frontier Farmland, an AgTech platform designed to improve farming outcomes through technology, and as Investment Associate at Farmland LP, a stalwart in regenerative land management and organic farmland conversion. Charles began his career in investment banking at Sandler O'Neill & Partners (merged forming Piper Sandler), and Youngwoo & Associates LLC, an international real estate developer.

Charles received his bachelor's degree in economics from Yale University and resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.

John R. Huber

huberjr@wellsfargo.com

John is National Advisory lead for Wells Fargo's Tech Banking practice. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, John helps innovation companies across the country achieve financial success with debt/equity capital underwriting, global payments & investment solutions and various risk management services. Clients span all sectors outside life science with deep practice competency in Fintech, PropTech, Enterprise Software, Food / Ag and Sustainable Energy Tech. Segment coverage teams run from Seed through Mid Cap publics. John is a graduate of Northwestern University and University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He lives in Palo Alto and enjoys cycling, golf and all manners of the wine industry

Lawrence Ibarria

lawrence@nighthawk.ag

Lawrence Ibarria holds a PhD in CS, has a decade of experience at NVIDIA, years doing self driving at GM Cruise, and is a two times founder in Agriculture: Verdant Robotics and now Nighthawk. At Nighthawk he is developing an easy-to-use platform to help farmers make better decisions about inputs and improve crop health with proprietary AI-powered tools that offer quick insights and help save farmers significant dollars on supplies and human capital. His main interests are in AI, robotics and how to change agriculture for the better.

Kevin Lang

klang@agerpoint.com

Kevin is the CEO & President at Agerpoint, an innovator in geospatial intelligence that develops digital technologies to empower a sustainable food system and to protect natural environments. Agerpoint's spatial intelligence platform creates 3D models of crops and forests using smartphones and remote sensing, extracts plant metrics using artificial intelligence and fuses these outputs with other data layers to create plant-level digital twins for agriculture and climate-related insights.

Prior to Agerpoint, Kevin was Co-Founder and CEO of geospatial technology startup, spadeGEO. Prior to that, Kevin led the Agriculture business at PrecisionHawk, a commercial drone technology and analytics company. He also held roles at Deloitte Consulting and began his career in product development engineering with John Deere.

Kevin builds high-performing teams and solutions that use geospatial data, remote sensing and AI alongside immersive experiences with XR to address pressing societal issues such as food security, climate change, natural resource scarcity and aging infrastructure.

He holds an MBA from Wake Forest University and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Clemson University.

Benjamin Leavenworth

bl@afinainternational.com

Benjamin Leavenworth has more than 20 years in international business, with a focus on Latin America. Mr. Leavenworth also serves as Honorary Consul of Chile for Pennsylvania, Delaware, and southern New Jersey.

Prior to co-founding Afina in 2011, he founded and ran the Chispa Group, an international consultancy with a focus on mining, energy, agriculture, and government projects across Latin America. He also serves as president of the board of Pata Foods, a leading organic baby food producer, and as a director on the boards of the Chilean & American Chamber of Commerce, Global Independence Center, Pan America Associations, and the Consular Corps Association of Philadelphia.

Winnie Leung

leungw@ajiusa.com



Winnie Leung is Investment Director at Ajinomoto CVC, the corporate venture capital arm of Ajinomoto, a $10B revenue ingredient and material science company. Ajinomoto CVC invests in transformative companies that advance new ways to extend health span, develop new approaches that change the ways information is processed, and answer complex challenges in sustainability.

Before joining Ajinomoto CVC, Winnie was VP at Bits x Bites, a $100M Shanghai-based agrifood tech VC fund investing in disruptive startups from cellular agriculture to crop gene editing.

Paul Maxwell

paul.maxwell@nutrien.com

Paul Maxwell is a seasoned professional in the agriculture industry with over 27 years of experience in operational management and leadership. As a Manager at Nutrien Ag Solutions, he oversees the operations and performance of a major retail outlet in California's Salinas Valley, catering to the diverse needs of local farmers and growers. 

Paul's expertise spans facility management, forecasting, EBITDA, P&L management, pest control, crop advising, strategic planning, and effective communication. He holds multiple industry certifications, including Pest Control Advisor, Qualified Applicator, and Certified Crop Advisor, reflecting his deep technical knowledge and commitment to excellence.

Fluent in Spanish and Italian and proficient in Microsoft Office, Paul is adept at engaging with diverse stakeholders and driving results. His mission is to deliver high-quality products and services to customers while maximizing the profitability and sustainability of his outlet and contributing to the company's success.

Daniel Maycock

dmaycock@agerpoint.com

I grew up in a small farming town and started working with computers at the age of 13 during the emergence of personal computing and the internet in the early 90s. I got to spend my afternoons after school helping local farmers leverage computers to access weather data via dial-up and use office applications for back-office management. After attending Washington State University, the state's land-grant university, and getting married to a wonderful woman, I transitioned into the high-tech world for 15 years in Seattle.

During this time, I worked at companies such as Boeing and Amazon, launched a couple of startups, and worked globally in analytics consulting. I also earned my master's degree from Carnegie Mellon University, published a book, and had two children along the way. My career allowed me to travel the world and do some amazing things, but in the end, my true passion was to apply my work back to agriculture.

After my time at Amazon, my family and I, therefore, moved back to Eastern Washington, where I served as the head of analytics for a large agricultural packing distributor and as CIO for a major fruit grower, focusing on implementing analytics to improve operations. This experience led me to help found Loftus Labs, which provides fractional data-focused resources to agricultural companies along the West Coast.

After a time living back in Central Washington, my family then decided to move to Raleigh, NC, to experience a new part of the US and participate in the exciting AgTech scene here. Now, as the Chief Data Officer at Agerpoint, I get to explore opportunities to leverage AI in farming and work as an adjunct at NC State, helping to mature programs focused on data engineering best practices in agriculture.

Eric Morgan

eric.morgan@bragafresh.com

Eric Morgan is the Vice President of Environmental Science and Resources at Braga Fresh. In this role, he combines his expertise in agriculture with cutting-edge technology to drive sustainability and innovation in farming practices, working at the intersection of on-farm sustainability, regeneration, and ag tech.

Prior to this role, Eric was a Pest Control Advisor and manager for Valley Farm Applications, where he honed his skills in pest management and crop protection.

In 2009, Eric founded Soil Health Laboratories, LLC, with the mission of helping growers reduce fertilizer inputs through real-time laboratory results and his professional experience. The lab, which is still in operation today, provides same-day analysis of soil and water for nitrate, ammonium, and pH levels for cool season vegetable growers in the Salinas and Imperial Valleys. The lab's newest offerings include plant sap analysis, soil and pathogen genetic testing, and advanced agricultural technology applications to enhance soil health and crop yields.

The Braga family began farming in the Salinas Valley in 1928. Today, the third generation continues the family values of sustainable farming. Now vertically integrated, Braga Fresh combines innovation with tradition to grow, harvest, and process fresh vegetables and leafy greens through the Josie's Organics brand.

Under Eric's leadership, Braga Fresh has set aside 10% of its farmland for beneficial habitat and has launched regenerative farming trials. In July 2023, Braga Fresh partnered with Whole Foods Market to introduce regeneratively grown sweet baby broccoli into the marketplace under the Josie's Organics brand.

Eric has been at the forefront of integrating ag tech solutions into everyday farming practices. In early 2024, he was flown to Iowa by John Deere to provide feedback and insight on adapting their products and technology for cool season vegetable production. He has extensive experience in adapting Midwest farm technology for this market. In October 2023, Eric received an Award for Technology and Innovation from the International Fresh Produce Association (IFPA). He also contributed the concept for the Arbiter CO2 sensor to Agrology and was the first vegetable grower to release beneficial insects in cool season organic vegetables. Eric is a mentor for ag tech startups through IFPA, sharing his knowledge and experience to foster innovation in the industry.

Mathias Müller

mathias.muller@corteva.com

In the capacity of Sr. Director at Corteva Catalyst™, Mat has the privilege to lead technology acquisitions and investments in startup companies that align with Corteva's strategic priorities. He has a passion for collaboration tactics which allow us to deliver industry-leading traits in must-win battlegrounds.

Prior to this role, Mat led Corteva's Biotechnology Strategy function; established and developed Corteva's Open Innovation platform and the company's CRISPR licensing strategies. He held leadership positions in science and business at DuPont, Pioneer Hi-Bred, Verdia and Maxygen. His education comprises a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Lausanne, and an MBA from the California State University at Hayward.

John Peryam

john@fgcvc.com

John is a partner at Fulcrum Global Capital (FGC) an early-stage VC firm focused on management teams working to solve material issues within the global food production industry. John has over fifteen years of experience in investing, structuring, managing, and facilitating private market investments and other complex commercial transactions. With a background in both the traditional corporate environment and the private practice of law, John brings a deep experience in corporate capital transactions and knowledge of the funding landscape for early-stage companies.

George Powlick

gwp@astanor.com

George joined Astanor in 2020 as a Venture Partner, based in the United States. Among his 25 years of experience in venture capital, he has been the managing director of Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures since 2000, a fund focused on early stage European technology start-ups. Previously, he spent six years at Intel Corporation where he was instrumental in starting the group that became Intel Capital in EMEA.



During the last decade, George has focused primarily on sustainability investments and has been the Chairman of several start-up companies in the renewable energy sector. He is now applying his experience to help guide agri-food tech entrepreneurs to success.

Sheldon Ray

sheldon.ray@raymondjames.com

Sheldon is a Certified Portfolio Manager, Sr. Vice President and International Wealth Advisor at Raymond James in Washington, DC. He and his partner manage two complementary investment strategies:

• A global value-oriented portfolio of equities and fixed income for individuals and institutions 
• A US growth-oriented portfolio of equities and fixed income for individuals and institutions

Sheldon's analysis focuses on risk management, corporate governance, global macroeconomics, and long-term geopolitical developments, in addition to dividend yields, price-to-earnings ratios, credit analysis and other fundamentals. He conducts his own research and maintains regular contact with senior government officials, diplomats, economists, regulators and journalists.

Sheldon began his stock market experience as a young investor (age 14) in the grueling bear market of the early 1970's. He entered the securities profession with Prudential Securities in 1996, and joined Raymond James in February of 2015, after working at Morgan Stanley and UBS. Previously, Sheldon worked in the real estate investment business in Hong Kong in the 1980's. Sheldon's Hong Kong experience was pivotal in developing his global perspective.

Sheldon currently serves as chairman of the board of the Osgood Center (www.osgoodcenter.org​), on the advisory board of the SEC Historical Society (www.sechistorical.org​), treasurer of the Foreign Policy Discussion Group (www.fpdg.org​), finance committee and board of directors of Watergate South and co-chair of Rotarians for the Equality of Black People Committee. He has been active in the Rotary Club of Washington , D.C. for over 30 years, after joining Rotary initially in Hong Kong in 1988.

Sheldon regularly speaks to various groups on international financial markets and global corporate governance issues. Audiences include Fudan University in Shanghai, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business Alumni, National Defense University, Renmin University in Beijing, the Foreign Service Institute of the Department of State and the American Association of Independent Investors. During Sarbanes/Oxley proceedings Sheldon advised SEC commissioners on non-US securities regulations.

Sheldon has a Bachelor of Science degree in finance from Louisiana State University and received his Certified Portfolio Manager designation from Columbia University. He lives in Washington with his wife, Mary Beth, and is an Eagle Scout.

Mike Schwieterman

schwiet@gmail.com

Michael Schwieterman's career is dedicated to enhancing yield and flavor by examining the interplay of genetic elements with environmental and crop management factors. His expertise spans designing and implementing research programs in flavor chemistry, breeding innovative crop varieties, and creating advanced production systems for fruits and vegetables. Michael's connection to agriculture runs deep, tracing back generations, with formative years spent on his family's farm in the Midwest.

Prior to his extensive research and leadership in plant science at Plenty, Michael established the Chemistry Lab at Driscoll's, where he advanced trait discovery and cultivar development across all berry crops. He holds a doctorate in plant molecular and cellular biology from the University of Florida, where his studies focused on flower development in petunias and fruit chemistry for strawberry breeding. During a postdoctoral appointment, he explored the use of metabolomics and LED wavelengths to assess their impact on the quality of fruits and herbs.

Stephen Sutton

steve@transparentseafarm.com

Steve grew up as an avid fisherman in upstate NY and attended Columbia University. He worked as a commercial fisherman and fisheries biologist for the federal government before obtaining a master's degree in aquaculture and spending close to a decade managing aquaculture farms overseas.

Since 2020, he has built, owned and operated an indoor shrimp farming technology company with its commercial pilot in Los Angeles County. He named the company TransparentSea, because transparency is a quality that the seafood industry is failing to provide its consumers.

Ilias Tagkopoulos

itagkopoulos@ucdavis.com

Dr. Tagkopoulos is a leading expert in computational science with a focus on biomedical and business applications.

He is a professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Davis, and the director of the USDA/NSF AI Institute for Next-Generation Food Systems (AIFS).

Prior to joining UC Davis, Ilias worked at fixed-income derivatives models at Credit Suisse, NY. Ilias holds a Diploma from the University of Patras, an M.Sc. from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. from Princeton University, all in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Rob Trice

rob@mixingbowlhub.com

Rob Trice is the Founder of The Mixing Bowl. In 2013, he began to leverage his background in telecom, mobile and internet venture capital to the application of information technology to the food and agriculture sectors. He is also the Founder of Better Food Ventures, making seed-stage investments aligned with the theme of applying IT to the food and agriculture industries. Rob previously worked at Swisscom Ventures, SK Telecom Ventures, Nokia Growth Partners and Nokia Venture Partners (now BlueRun Ventures).

Prior to his days in venture capital work, he was at DIRECTV in LA and at a think-tank in DC, the Center for Strategic & International Studies. He also founded the non-profit Corporate Innovators Huddle and serves on the board of San Francisco-based engaged philanthropy organization, Full Circle Fund. He splits his time between Menlo Park and Pescadero, CA.

Carter Williams

cwilliams@iselectfund.com

Carter Williams has spent his entire career working on innovation. First as a young engineer at McDonnell Douglas, next in his leadership roles at Boeing managing R&D and starting Boeing Ventures. Later as a successful entrepreneur and venture investor. Throughout his career, he has directly managed investments of over $600 million in early-stage ventures and corporate research, resulting in several billion dollars of new product revenues. As part of Boeing Phantom Works, Carter led Boeing's technology planning process, involving all aspects of internal and external technology development and manufacturing research. This eventually led to his role in founding and managing Boeing Ventures. After Boeing, he was President of Gridlogix, initially a small 4-person startup that grew over 3 years, exiting successfully to Johnson Controls in October 2008. Gridlogix became Johnson Controls Panopics system. Before leading iSelect, Carter was Senior Managing Director at Progress Partners, an energy and technology investment banking firm. He was a Managing Partner at Open Innovation Ventures and a Director at Clayton Capital Partners. Carter is the past President and Founder of the MIT Corporate Venturing Consortium and Co-founder of the MIT Entrepreneurship Society. He has an M.B.A. from the MIT Sloan School and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He also writes about innovation at the substack Creative Destruction.

Melanie Yelton

melanie@growbig.ag

As an independent consultant, Melanie integrates information drawn from her work as a director in plant science at Plenty and as a vice president of research in the horticulture lighting industry, as well as her broad contacts with key individuals in specific topics within the Controlled Environment Agriculture Sector.

Melanie's research has focused on optimizing plant growth, flavor and quality using light and she holds a patent for work involving filamentous fungus. She served as a lecturer and scientist at Stanford University, teaching and studying plant signaling in alfalfa and corn. She also served as Director of Sequencing at the Stanford DNA Sequence and Technology Center, part of The Human Genome Project. Melanie earned a Ph.D. from UC Davis in Plant Molecular Biology; a Master's degree in Biochemistry from the University of South Carolina; and a Bachelor's degree in Biology from Virginia Tech.

Brad Zamft

brad@heritable.ag

Brad is the CEO of Heritable Agriculture.

Previously Brad Zamft was the project lead on an early-stage project at X working at the intersection of ML, agriculture, and sustainability. Prior to his work at X he served as the Chief Scientific Officer of TL Biolabs – a startup aimed at DNA diagnostics for the cattle industry.

Before joining TL Biolabs, Brad worked at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as a Program Officer and Fellow. He led the Foundation's partnership with the National Natural Science Foundation of China, ran grants on synthetic-biology based drug discovery, and initiated and developed a bacteriophage program.

Before working at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Brad was a fellow at the US Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E). There he served as a technical advisor for the PETRO program, which aimed to engineer plants to directly produce drop-in compatible biofuels, and helped develop the TERRA program, which aimed to accelerate plant breeding via interdisciplinary research in robotics, bioinformatics, computational biology, remote sensing, phenomics, and agriculture.

Brad received his PhD in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley and performed postdoctoral research at Harvard under Prof. George Church.

Alfred Zimmerman

a.zimmerman@axitan.com

Al has 25+ years of strategy, commercial, operating and innovation experience across multiple high-tech industries, with 15+ years in biotechnology. He has a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas, an MBA from Texas Christian University and an Executive Certificate from the University of Wisconsin.

Most recently Al has led innovation, growth strategy, business development & M&A at Novus International as the Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer. Prior to joining Novus, Al established and led the Dietary Supplement Finished Format Business at DuPont (now IFF). While at DuPont, Al oversaw the development of the probiotic manufacturing platform within the US and finished format manufacturing platform globally.

Andrew Ziolkowski

andy@cultiviansbx.com

With over 40 years of venture capital investing experience and a track record of achieving near-40% IRRs, Jason is a seasoned leader in the industry. As Managing Director and Cofounder of Cultivian Ventures and the Cultivian Sandbox Food & Ag Funds, [Name] has helped establish these funds as pioneers in the food and ag tech sectors. His extensive career includes leadership roles as Managing Director of SAE Ventures and Forest Street Capital, Director of Venture Capital at CS First Boston Merchant Bank, and General Partner at Whitehead Associates. An accomplished academic, Jason holds an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, attended Princeton University for graduate studies in plasma physics, and earned a BS in engineering from the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School as a Grumman Scholar.