Speakers
Haven Baker, JR Simplot Company
Haven Baker is the Director of New Market Initiatives at the JR Simplot Company. Simplot is a $4.5 billion dollar private corporation with fertilizer, food and livestock divisions. At Simplot, Haven works on identifying and commercializing new technologies and opportunities across the agricultural space. He has significant experience in the biotechnology industry, including working with several start-ups and managing a proteomics research lab at the Barnett Institute in Boston.
Prior to joining Simplot, he worked as an investment professional at Clarium, a global-macro hedge fund in New York. Haven has a BS from Yale, a PhD in chemistry from Northeastern University, and received an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School.
Inge Bisconer, Toro Micro-Irrigation
Inge Bisconer is the Technical Marketing and Sales Manager for Toro Micro-Irrigation in El Cajon, CA. She has worked in production agriculture, co-founded an irrigation consulting firm, and has held various technical, sales, marketing and management positions in the irrigation and water treatment industries over the past 25 years.
Inge is currently serving as a Director for the California Irrigation Institute. She is also an Irrigation Association Certified Irrigation Designer (CID) and Landscape Irrigation Auditor (CLIA), and is past-chair of the IA’s Drip/Micro Common Interest Group and it’s Market Development Subcommittee. Under her leadership, the Committee recently released an online tool called the Drip/Micro Irrigation Payback Wizard which was created to help growers easily recognize various cost savings and revenue enhancement benefits associated with the conversion to drip irrigation technology.
She holds a BS in agriculture from UC Davis, an MBA in technology management from the University of Phoenix, and has been an associate faculty member at MiraCosta College in Oceanside, CA for Soil Science and Landscape Irrigation. She has published numerous articles, papers, manuals and education curriculum in the fields of drip, sprinkler and mechanized irrigation for agriculture, drip/micro for landscaping, and membrane technology for municipal and industrial water treatment.
Dr. Charles Cleland, USDA Small Business Innovation Research
Dr. Cleland joined the USDA as Director of the SBIR program in May of 1987. In 1998 he received a National Tibbetts Award in recognition of his contributions to the SBIR program. Today he continues to work with the USDA SBIR program as one of six National Program Leaders with responsibility for different parts of the SBIR Program.
Charles Cleland received his B.A. from Wabash College in 1961, and a Ph.D. in Plant Physiology from Stanford University in 1966. He spent two years at Michigan State University as a postdoctoral research fellow studying the hormonal control of flowering. He continued his research on the physiology and biochemistry of flowering as an Assistant Professor of Biology at Harvard University, Visiting Assistant Professor of Botany at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Plant Physiologist at the Smithsonian Institution Environmental Research Center. During this period, he authored over 30 scientific publications.
Claude Corcos, Toro Micro-Irrigation
Claude Corcos has a B.S. in economics from Lehigh University, an M.B.A. from Penn State University, and is a Certified Irrigation Designer. He has worked in sales, marketing, and product assurance roles over his 19 years of experience in water supply systems, wastewater collection systems, and irrigation system design.
Claude is currently employed by The Toro Company as the Marketing Manager of their Micro-Irrigation division. Claude’s team generates educational materials to help growers understand the value of drip irrigation technology, guides the product development efforts of Toro, and promotes Toro products into the agricultural market. He is a member of the Water Management Committee of the Irrigation Association and past chair of the Drip/Micro Common Interest Group, also of the Irrigation Association.
Amol Deshpande, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Amol Deshpande joined KPCB in April 2008 and focuses on opportunities in green technology with specific emphasis on fuels, chemicals, water, waste and environmental technologies. While at KPCB Amol has been instrumental in leading the first investment in the water sector and has co-founded and incubated a venture in the waste management sector.
Prior to KPCB, Amol spent 3 years as a director and associate at Black River and Cargill Ventures, both investment oriented business units of the private agribusiness, Cargill, Inc. While at Cargill, Amol focused on Greentech investment throughout the energy, water and agricultural supply chain. Amol was directly involved with investments and initiatives in multiple Greentech verticals including solar, next generation fuels, sustainable agriculture, industrial biotech, waste/environmental sciences and carbon markets. Prior to Cargill, Amol was an entrepreneur having founded an agricultural biotechnology company focused on novel germplasm in high value vegetable crops as well as companies in the water sector and educational services sector. In this, Amol has experience in writing business plans, fundraising and guiding strategy for new enterprises at all stages of development.
Amol has a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. Amol also has an MBA from Cornell University where he was a Park Fellow, receiving a full tuition merit based scholarship based on future leadership potential in business world.
Michael Dimock, Roots of Change
Michael Dimock is President of Roots of Change (ROC). ROC provides fellowships, contracts, and convening for participants in the burgeoning Changemakers Network.The network is collaborating on a campaign to create a sustainable food system in California by 2030. ROC is having powerful impact on the most influential forces in production agriculture, business, philanthropy, NGOs, and federal, state and local government.
Michael has focused on agriculture and food since 1989, when he was a marketing executive in Europe for Riverbend International, a global agribusiness company. In the 1990s, he founded Ag Innovations Network to build consensus and implement projects related to marketing, stewardship and policy. Additionally, Michael farmed organically in the Sonoma Valley for three years. Michael founded the Russian River chapter of Slow Food in 1997 and served as the first Chairman of Slow Food USA from 2002 to 2006. He also served on Slow Food’s International board from 2003 to 2007.
Michael’s convictions stem from early experiences on a cattle ranch in Santa Clara County and a development project with Himalayan subsistence farmers in Nepal. He received a BA with honors in History at UCLA in 1983 and a Masters in International Affairs at Columbia University in 1988.
Dr. Jeff Dlott, Sure Harvest
Dr. Jeff Dlott is president of SureHarvest, a California corporation providing sustainability solutions for the agrifood supply chain. Starting in 1999, SureHarvest has been delivering software tools and professional services to growers, wineries, trade associations, and food companies. Jeff has almost 20 years of experience in pest management research, bio-integrated partnership projects, and the development of sustainability programs for over 25 different commodities, most notably, the California Sustainable Winegrowing Program.
Currently, Jeff is leading the SureHarvest team as they collaborate with almond, pear, and dairy trade associations to develop sustainability programs applicable to their own industry. Jeff co-founded the Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops, an initiative among growers, shippers, processors, food service and retailers to develop a common standard for sustainability performance metrics for use throughout the agrifood supply chain. Jeff is also participating in a multi-stakeholder effort to design a Sustainability Index to measure the impact of the production processes of Walmart’s 60,000+ suppliers on energy and climate, natural resources, people and community.
Jeff received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management in 1993.
Scott Exo, Food Alliance
As the Executive Director, Scott provides strategic direction and leadership for Food Alliance, a nonprofit organization that certifies farms, ranches and food handlers for sustainable agricultural and facility management practices.
Scott has over twenty years of non-profit and program management experience. Prior to joining Food Alliance in 1999, he worked on farm and forest land conservation issues for 1000 Friends of Oregon, managed rural development and education programs in Asia and Africa, and was an organizational consultant.
Scott currently serves on the Oregon Sustainable Agriculture Resource Center’s administrative council; the ODA/OSU Food Innovation Center advisory board, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch advisory board. As an East-West Center graduate fellow, Scott earned dual Masters degrees in Geography and in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1989.
Reagan Grabner, Lamb Weston, a subsidiary of Con Agra
Reagan leads Business Development initiatives for Lamb Weston in North America. A division of ConAgra Foods, Lamb Weston processes and sells frozen potato products, frozen vegetables and other food products around the world. The company is a large producer of organic milk and vegetable products and is committed to helping the industry make further advances in terms of sustainability.
Prior to joining Lamb Weston, Mr. Grabner worked in the private equity industry and for Goldman Sachs’ Private Wealth Management Division. He is a graduate of the Harvard Business School and the University of Puget Sound. Mr. Grabner is a native of the Pacific Northwest where he was raised on a dryland wheat farm.
Colin Guheen, Cowen Group
Colin Guheen is a Vice President and research analyst for the Cowen Group, where he covers the restaurant industry and aquaculture. Prior to joining Cowen, he worked at MFS Investment Management. Before MFS, Mr. Guheen worked on projects related to utility privatization at Perez Alati, an International law firm in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Mr. Guheen received a B.A. in international political economy from the University of Puget Sound and is a CFA charterholder.
Scott Hackenberg, RSF Social Finance
Scott Hackenberg is the Lending Manager with RSF Social Finance where he identifies, underwrites and monitors loans for RSF’s Core Lending Program. Ranging in size from $200,000 – $5 million, RSF provides loans to nonprofit and for-profit organizations which are dedicated to improving the well-being of society and the environment.
Prior to joining RSF, Scott worked for a venture debt firm on Sand Hill Road focused on technology & alternative energy (TriplePoint Capital), served as Vice President to a food and consumer products focused private equity firm (Swander Pace Capital) and worked for The Blackstone Group in New York City. A part-time rancher, he has lived on a farm on the San Mateo Coast for the past 14 years, where he and his wife raise sheep, draft horses, llamas, chickens, dogs, cats and two pot-bellied pigs named Pinky & Petunia. Scott grew up in Ohio and received his BA from Cornell University.
Jeana K. Hultquist, US Ag Bank
Jeana Hultquist is Vice President of Legislative Affairs for U.S. AgBank. She oversees the government affairs activities for U.S. AgBank and its affiliated 26 Farm Credit institutions. Ms. Hultquist began her career with the Farm Credit System in 1982, and now spends a good deal of her time assisting customer-owners in telling their stories, advocating for agriculture and how the Farm Credit System plays an integral part of the agricultural community.
Over the past couple of years, Ms. Hultquist has participated in a number of projects and focus groups, including San Francisco Mayor Newsome’s Urban/Rural Roundtable, exploring the commercial nature of regional food economies that are forming as a complement to the global supply chain and the evolving public policy environment surrounding these initiatives. Most recently, Hultquist was among selected stakeholders to continue California’s AgVision 2030, a strategic planning process designed to create a 20-year plan to guide policymakers, agriculture and affiliated interests in positioning California’s agricultural industry for a prosperous future.
Ms. Hultquist received her general education from Chico State University and an Associate of Arts Degree from American River College in Legal Assisting. She is a recent graduate of the California Agricultural Leadership program and a currently serves on the board of directors for the Agricultural Council of California.
Niko Klein, Imprint Capital
Niko Klein joined Imprint Capital as an Analyst in August 2008. Previously, Mr. Klein was a co-founder and principal of Meru, S.A., a specially formed enterprise responsible for the pre-development of the Viñas del Cielo Wine Resort in Mendoza, Argentina. At Meru, Mr. Klein co-managed the land-acquisition, legal processes, human resources and strategic partnerships of the company. Mr. Klein also co-led the architectural and concept design of the hotel, winery, spa and restaurant, and developed detailed economic models for the project’s operations and financing. Prior to Meru, Mr. Klein worked as a senior intern at CASA, a pioneering nonprofit based in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico. In addition to operating Mexico’s only certified school for midwifery and the state’s largest community outreach program, CASA provides day-care, arts-training, and family planning to the rural youth of Guanajuato. At CASA, Mr. Klein led the organization’s internal metrics analysis, donor reporting, and publicity. Mr. Klein has also worked at the World Wildlife Fund, the Columbia University School of Social Work, and the Brainfood Summer Institute. Mr. Klein has a Bachelor’s in English Literature from Columbia University.
Dr. Brie Ann Linkenhoker, Monitor Group
Dr. Brie Ann Linkenhoker is an Associate Partner with the Monitor Group, a global consulting firm, and a Senior Practitioner of Scenario Planning with Global Business Network (GBN), a Monitor Group company that helps clients manage strategic uncertainties in rapidly changing environments. Brie has designed and delivered strategic analysis, scenario planning, innovation, competitive simulation, and other long-term strategic planning projects for clients in the life sciences, agriculture, education, environmental management, telecom, financial services, transportation, IT, government, and non-profit sectors. Some of her recent engagements in agriculture have included
• For a multinational agriculture company, connecting scenarios on the future of global agriculture to strategic choices about crop portfolio, technology investments, service offerings, biofuels commitment, and target geographies
• Helping the national government of a country with recent experience of droughts and food shortages develop a 20-year water management strategy informed by scenarios that integrated climate change, global oil demand, demographic change, advances in water management technology, and economic development
• Advising two major international NGOs on emerging technologies and farmer practices that could impact agriculture in the developing world, both for small-plot farmers and scaling agricultural endeavors
Brie holds an M.A. in International Policy Studies from Stanford University, where she focused on emerging agricultural technologies and how they could impact and be affected by national and international trade policy in agriculture and economic development. Since coming to Monitor, Brie has worked on agriculture and climate related scenario projects for corporate, government and non-profit clients across three continents. Brie also holds a Ph.D. in Neurosciences from Stanford University, and she continues to enjoy her work in the life sciences with pharma and biotech clients around the world.
Jason Matheny, New Harvest
Jason Matheny is Director of New Harvest, a nonprofit supporting the development of new meat substitutes.
Jason is a Research Fellow at Oxford University and a Sommer Scholar at Johns Hopkins University. He previously worked for the World Bank and the Center for Biosecurity. He has published on biotechnology, neurotechnology, risk analysis demography, health economics, and bioethics. His work was called one of the “ideas of the year” by The New York Times and has been featured in The Washington Post, Nature, The Economist, Scientific American, New Scientist, NOVA, and Wired Magazine, among others.
Patrick Pohlen, Latham & Watkins
Patrick A. Pohlen is a partner in Latham & Watkins’ Silicon Valley office, where he is the global Co-Chair of the firm’s Emerging Company Practice Group and a member of the firm’s Corporate Department. Mr. Pohlen is one of the nation’s leading attorneys in representing technology, clean technology and life science companies and the financial institutions (venture capitalists and investment banks) that finance them. His practice focuses on general corporate counseling, corporate governance, venture finance, public offerings, securities and mergers & acquisitions.
Prior to joining Latham & Watkins, Mr. Pohlen ran a high profile technology start-up. This experience makes him especially attuned to the business and legal issues facing emerging growth companies today.
Mr. Pohlen has extensive experience in financings and securities matters. He has represented companies, underwriters and investors in venture financings and public offerings. Since 1997, Mr. Pohlen has been ranked nationally in the IPO Journal’s listing of the country’s top ten IPO lawyers based on the number of initial public offerings completed.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Pohlen was a partner at Cooley Godward LLP, where he headed the firm’s Public Offering Practice Group and the Investment Banking Practice Group, and prior to that practiced at a major law firm in New York.
Mr. Pohlen was recently named one of the “Top 100 Lawyers in California” for 2009 by the Daily Journal. He has also been named one of America’s Leading Business Lawyers in Chambers USA in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 and is listed in The Best Lawyers in America.
In addition to serving on the Corporate Laws Committee of the ABA, Mr. Pohlen has been a guest lecturer and publisher of materials for several Practising Law Institute seminars, including Securities Offerings; Securities Laws and Internet; and Venture Capital: Planning an Exit. He has also been an instructor at the University of Iowa College of Business and has been a guest lecturer for the Executive MBA Program at Rockhurst College. Mr. Pohlen is also active in many community activities.
Stu Rudick, Mindful Investors
Stuart Rudick has been a practitioner, leader and investor in the health and sustainability-focused community for over 30 years. He is the Founding and Managing Partner at Mindful Investors, LLC, a leading U.S. Private Equity fund focused on investments in healthy and sustainable consumer products companies. Included in Mindful’s fund are two sustainable food focused companies: CleanFish, a global leader in promoting, marketing and distributing healthy, sustainable seafood; and Organicgirl, a leading organic produce company which employs business and farming practices that conserve natural resources and energy, protects the environment, and provides a socially-responsible work environment.
Mr. Rudick’s prior investment experience includes founding in 2005 a private family office focused on investments in health and wellness. In 1993, Stuart founded, Mindful Partners, a top performing public and private market hedge fund. In the 1980’s, he served as Associate Director at Bear Stearns Inc, facilitating funding of private environmental companies through the Global Environment Fund. Mr. Rudick is a founding Board Member and past Chairman of Waterkeepers (Baykeeper) of Northern California and current Board Member for BluePlanetRun Foundation. Affiliations he is actively involved with include: B Corporation, Environmental Entrepreneurs, Investor’s Circle, NRDC, Rainforest Action Network and Friends of the Earth.
Mr. Rudick earned a BS in Business Administration from the University of Colorado and attended the University of Lancaster, UK and MBA program at Golden Gate University. Stuart’s daily practice includes yoga, meditation, Qigong and mindful living.
Don Shaffer, RSF Social Finance
Don Shaffer is President & CEO of RSF Social Finance, a nonprofit financial services organization at the center of a growing movement to support a network of place-based, local economies that value human beings and the environment. Inspired by the work of Rudolf Steiner, RSF has made over $200 million in loans and over $90 million in grants since 1984 to organizations in the areas of Food & Agriculture, Education & the Arts, and Ecological Stewardship.
Prior to joining RSF, Don served as Executive Director of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), developing it into an alliance of over 15,000 independently-owned businesses across the U.S. and Canada. He has also served as Interim Executive Director of Investors’ Circle, a network of angel investors, professional venture capitalists, foundations, family offices, and others who invest private capital into companies addressing social and environmental issues. Don’s experience includes over 15 years in senior management positions building social mission companies, including Comet Skateboards, a designer and manufacturer of premium skateboarding products committed to local and sustainable business practices. He has served and led sales, marketing, business development, and general operations teams in the education and software sectors. Don serves as a Board Member of Comet Skateboards, BALLE, and Social Venture Network. He participates in an advisory capacity with Entrepreneurship@Cornell, B Lab, and Slow Money. He also co-chairs the Roots of Change Business Leadership Council. Don graduated with a degree in American History from Cornell University and lives in Oakland, California, with his wife, Jennifer, and their daughter, Sabine.
Dr. Tom Tomich, UC Davis
Tom Tomich joined the University of California Davis faculty in January 2007. He is founding director of the new Agricultural Sustainability Institute, inaugural holder of the WK Kellogg Chair in Sustainable Food Systems, and professor of community development, environmental science and policy at UC Davis. He also serves as director of the UC ANR statewide Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program. Tomich was principal economist for the World Agroforestry Centre from 1994-2006. During that time, he worked with the ASB Partnership for the Tropical Forest Margins, first in Southeast Asia and then as ASB global coordinator, based in Nairobi, Kenya, leading long-term collaborative partnerships at sites in the Amazon, Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia aiming to raise productivity and income of rural households without increasing deforestation or undermining essential environmental services. Before that, Tomich spent 10 years as a policy advisor and institute associate with the Harvard Institute for International Development and also served as a lecturer in economics and in public policy at Harvard University. Tomich was raised on a family farm in Orangevale (near Sacramento). He received his BA in economics from UC Davis in 1979 and has an MA and PhD in Food Research from Stanford University.
Megan Westgate, Non-GMO Project
Megan grew up in the rolling hills and abundant farmland of Western Massachusetts, and has been passionate about food quality and healthfulness for much of her life. In 2002, she graduated cum laude from Scripps College with a bachelor’s degree in art. Her senior thesis, “Conscious Eating Tableware,” was a ceramics work advocating thoughtful food choices, and reflected substantial study into the effects of pesticides on the human body.
After Scripps she worked as a manager at Green’s Restaurant in San Francicso, while pursuing private studies in Traditional Chinese Medicine and the healing properties of food. She also spent a year on the operations team at the Heartwood Institute in Northern California, where the noticeable benefits of the exclusively organic, whole foods diet furthered her commitment to the value of safe, healthy food.
In 2004 she moved to Tucson, where she held the position of Outreach Coordinator at the Food Conspiracy Co-op, where she maintained a unique labeling program that indicated GMO risk for the store’s products. This important but challenging task brought her attention to the need for a consistent, industry-wide standard for non-GMO, and inspired her to start volunteering for the Non-GMO Project when she first heard about it in early 2006. Today she serves as the Project’s Executive Director.
David Tze, Managing Director, Aquacopia Venture Partners LLC
David Tze co-founded Aquacopia, the first aquaculture venture capital firm. He applies pioneering strategies and technology to developing sectors within established industries. Previously, he was CTO of the venture-funded NetworkOil equipment marketplace for the oil and gas industry, spearheaded web consultancy Concrete, and co-founded Cache Networks, a novel digital television platform. Mr. Tze serves on the boards of Futuna Blue, Litchfield Farms, Oberon, Ocean Farm Technologies, Snapperfarm, and The Ocean Stewards Institute. He has an A.B. in economics from Princeton.
Derek Yurosek, Wm Bolthouse Farms, Inc.
Derek Yurosek is the Vice President of Agricultural Operations for Wm Bolthouse Farms, Incorporated. He holds a B.A. in Agricultural Business from Colorado State University (1993) and an M.B.A. from Colorado State University School of Business (1994). He makes time for his community, and serves on the Board of Directors for the Jim Burke Educational Foundation, the Advisory Committee for the Bakersfield College Agriculture Department and is Co-Chairman of the Bakersfield High School Agricultural Advisory Committee. Derek is married to Kellie, his wife of 13 years and they have four children, Sophia, age 11, Calvin, age 9, Benjamin, age 7 and Owen, 17 months.
