Biographies
Hattie Brown
Kirchner Group, Kirchner Impact Foundation, VITALIZE VC Angel Network
Website
Hattie serves as Managing Director of Impact and ESG at Kirchner Group and Co-Manager of the Kirchner Impact Foundation, an organization focused on supporting businesses through asset management, operational support and advisory services.
In her role, Hattie is responsible for developing ESG and impact measurement and management strategies for investee due diligence and portfolio monitoring and leading strategic efforts of the Foundation in alignment with its mission to train a diverse generation of capital allocators in communities underserved by capital markets, specifically in the food and agriculture sector.
Before joining Kirchner, Hattie was Manager of the Impact Finance practice with Summit Consulting, where she performed underwriting, financial and impact due diligence, and other advisory services, for clients across a range of asset classes, return objectives, and impact themes. Her projects included financial underwriting and impact due diligence for the deployment of $9b to community development financial institutions (CDFIs) operating in underbanked communities, supporting women and minority-owned businesses and low-income individuals.
Hattie holds a Master of Science in Food Policy and Applied Nutrition and a Master in International Business from Tufts University. She is passionate about the potential of investment capital to drive social and environmental change, particularly as it relates to health and economic mobility.
Alexa Cubbage
DFA CoLab
Website
In her role as an Innovation Project Manager for Dairy Farmers of America, Alexa Cubbage concentrates on identifying cross-functional synergies, facilitating programs designed to empower innovative thinking, and managing DFA’s CoLAB Accelerator program. At DFA, Alexa also participates in the Growing Professionals Employee Resource Group and serves as a DEI Ambassador. She holds a Bachelor of Science in International Business from the University of Arkansas. In her spare time, she enjoys connecting with family and friends, serving at her local church, and volunteering as a Citizen Archivist.
Schuyler Dalton
WWF
Website
Schuyler focuses on regenerative agriculture for the WWF Impact team. Schuyler collaborates with internal and external stakeholders to refine WWF Impact’s investment thesis and generate dealflow, ensuring the strategy grounded in science, aligned with the priorities of producers, and promotes WWF’s organizational goals.
Prior to WWF, Schuyler was the Director of Farmer Network and Entrepreneurship at AgLaunch, an agtech accelerator in Memphis, TN. She has worked on farms across the United States and the world. Schuyler has a B.S. in Agricultural Sciences with a concentration in sustainable agriculture from Cornell University and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
DeWayne Dill
Facticity Technologies, Inc.
I have been at the intersection of technology and dairy my entire career. I have a M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in dairy management. My graduate research projects were working with the early prototype versions of milk meters, estrous detection technology, mastitis detection and artificial intelligence. As a student I also developed a herd management program used by the university dairy herd for several decades as well as the first ration formulation program used in the field by dairy nutrition consultants. From these early beginnings my career stepped briefly through dairy extension before working at a feed company and consulting company before settling down as president of a software company providing ration formulation to most of the feed industry. I left that position intending to devote time to mission work to establish the heart of a dairy industry in Haiti. When the Haiti opportunity was cut short, I decided to use my 30+ years of experience and knowledge in dairy records, dairy technology and ration formulation to build an automated system that would calculate dairy operation greenhouse gas emissions on a daily, individual animal basis.
Moritz Dolinga
University of Münster & CRC1199
Website
I am a PhD candidate at the University of Münster, Germany, as well as a research assistant at the DFG-funded Collaborative Research Center 1199 “Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition”. In my research I ethnographically explore the world of early-stage agri-food technology entrepreneurism in relation to the sustainable transformation of agri-food systems within the Dutch innovation ecosystem ‘Foodvalley’. By focusing on the networks of relations around early-stage agri-food technology startups, I analyze the social, economic, and political dynamics that shape and structure the development and commercialization processes of agriculture 4.0 technologies within innovation ecosystems. My work is animated by the question: How does venture capital and the innovation ecosystems around agri-food technology start-ups contribute to shape, (re-)imagine, and structure agtech and eventually agri-food system futures?
Maaz Gardezi
Virginia Tech
Website
Dr. Maaz Gardezi is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Virginia Tech. He is an environmental sociologist and maintains several long-term research projects through his Technology-Environment-Society Lab at Virginia Tech. He is the Principal Investigator of projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) grant. His research focuses on precision agriculture, exploring how emerging agricultural technologies such as artificial intelligence, sensors, and big data can help farmers mitigate and adapt to climate change while addressing social and political inequalities in agriculture. Dr. Gardezi’s participatory research/design methods involve farmers and farm workers as co-designers and co-evaluators of Artificial Intelligence solutions, along with nonprofit organizations and industry experts to balance innovation with demands of social justice. Additionally, his research projects in South Asia focus on climate adaptation and vulnerability among farming communities, examining power structures, outlining policy-relevant paths to empower marginalized communities, and innovating methods and theories relating to sustainability and climate.
Julie Guthman
Sociology Department, UCSC; AFTeR Project
Website
Julie Guthman holds a PhD in geography (UC Berkeley, 2000) and is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she conducts research on food system transformation in the US. Her 2019 book, Wilted: Pathogens, Chemicals, and the Fragile Future of the Strawberry Industry, was the recipient of the 2020 American Association of Geographers Meridian Award for outstanding scholarly work in geography. Her publications include three multi-award winning monographs, an edited collection, and over fifty articles in peer-reviewed journals. Most recently, she has been the principal investigator of the UC-AFTeR Project, a multi-campus collaboration investigating Silicon Valley’s recent forays into food and agriculture. Her forthcoming book, The Problem with Solutions: why Silicon Valley Can’t Back the Future of Food draws on this research.
Zenia Kish
Ontario Tech University
Zenia Kish is Assistant Professor of Communication and Digital Media Studies at Ontario Tech University (Canada). She earned her PhD in American Studies at New York University, was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, and previously taught at the University of Tulsa. Her work explores global digital media, food politics, digital agriculture, and philanthropy, and has been published in various leading academic journals. She is part of the UC-based Agri-Food Technology Research (AFTeR) Project, and serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Cultural Economy. She is co-editor of the anthology Food Instagram: Identity, Influence, and Negotiation, which won the 2023 Best Edited Volume Prize from the Association for the Study of Food and Society. She is currently writing a book about the media cultures of philanthropy.
Laurens Klerxk
Departamento de Economía Agraria- Universidad de Talca & Knowledge, Technology and Innovation Group – Wageningen University
Website
Laurens is a Principal Scientist at the University of Talca, Chile and Full Professor of Agrifood Innovation and Transition at the Knowledge, Technology and Innovation Group of Wageningen University, The Netherlands.
Laurens is an expert in the field of (agricultural) innovation studies, doing social science research and teaching and supervision (at Bachelor, Master and PhD level) on various topics such as:
- Institutional change in research and advisory organizations;
- Roles and positions of organizations that broker multi-stakeholder networks for innovation;
- Implementation of transdisciplinary science and co-innovation approaches;
- Dynamics an politics of research and innovation agenda setting;
- Advisory service innovation and professional development;
- Division of public, private and industry roles in innovation;
- Internationalization of research and innovation;
- Digital agriculture innovation;
- Transformative innovation in agri-food systems;
- Innovation system development;
- Innovation policy.
Manoj Kumar
Social Alpha
Website
Manoj Kumar is the Founder of Social Alpha, a multistage innovation curation and venture development platform for science and technology start-ups that aim to solve the most critical social, economic and environmental challenges.
Social Alpha supports entrepreneurs through a network of innovation labs, venture accelerators, blended capital pools and market access mechanisms. Selected start-ups get access to R&D infrastructure, sandboxes for pilots and validations, product management guidance, technical, business and regulatory expertise, early-stage risk capital and entrepreneurial mentoring. Since its inception in 2016, Social Alpha has supported over 250 start-ups, including 75+ seed investments and 100+ innovation grants.
Before founding Social Alpha, Manoj was an entrepreneur and an early-stage venture investor. Manoj serves on the boards of several companies, non-profits and research institutions. Manoj is also a Trustee of the Tata Institute for Genetics and Society and a Senior Advisor to Tata Trusts.
Edward Mabaya
Cornell University
Website
Ed Mabaya is a scholar and a development practitioner with more than two decades of experience working on development, agribusiness value chains and food security issues with a regional focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. He is a Research Professor in the Department of Global Development, and Director of Cornell University’s Humphrey Fellowship Program. His teaching, research and outreach work focuses on food security and economic development in Africa. Previously he was the Division Manager of Agribusiness Development at the African Development Bank (2018-2020) where he managed continent-wide investments, partnerships and research in support of the Feed Africa strategy. Mabaya earned his MSc (1998) and PhD (2003) degrees in Agricultural Economics at Cornell University and a BSc Honors in Agricultural Economics and Extension (1994) from the University of Zimbabwe.
Sarah Marquis
University of Ottawa
Sarah Marquis is a PhD candidate in Environmental Sustainability at the Institute of the Environment at the University of Ottawa in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Her work explores technosolutionism as a response to environmental and social problems like climate change. Currently, her research is focused on the role of digital agriculture in Canada’s federal climate change strategy, and the role private funders and venture capital play in the innovation trajectories of these technologies. Sarah received an MA degree from the University of Guelph’s Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics in 2020. She previously completed her undergraduate degree in Environmental Science at Queen’s University.
Christopher Miles
Cornell University
Christopher Miles is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment at Cornell University. He received his dual-Ph.D. in Communication & Culture and Informatics from Indiana University; his dissertation, “Data Farm: Precision Agriculture and the Government of Nature” provides a critical account of the historical-epistemological emergence of precision agriculture and an informatic ideal organizing efforts to expand command & control in agricultural environments. His research focuses on questions of power, politics, and ethics in phenomena at the intersections of culture, nature, technology and media, and has published on these issues in new media & society and Big Data & Society.
Rebekah Moses
Yield Lab Asia Pacific
Website
Rebekah Moses has led impact strategy teams across food-tech, ag-tech, and the broader climate and food security solution space. She has partnered with key policymakers such as the UN Climate Group to drive novel research, uptake of new food and ag technologies, and market-shaping engagement.
She works across businesses to help mobilize operations, product, and thought leadership to deliver positive environmental and social outcomes via growth. Focal areas include governance for purpose, decarbonization of controlled environment agriculture, livestock alternatives, and effectively shaping consumer engagement.
Rebekah began her career in the defense industry, leading to a focus on addressing resource scarcity. Following her graduate studies in International Agricultural Development at the University of California at Davis, she has supported public sector development and agricultural research at UC Berkeley, Stanford and Cal Poly’s coastal ecosystem ranch. She built and led the Impact Strategy team at Impossible Foods for six years, followed by a role as VP of Impact Strategy at Iron Ox, an AI-ML/robotics company seeking to revolutionize controlled environment agriculture. She has worked at the intersection of ecology, agriculture, and international development in the Middle East and domestically.
Pete Nelson
AgLaunch Initiative
Website
Pete Nelson is the President of AgLaunch Initiative, which is a nonprofit organization building a new commercialization model to support Climate-Smart innovations that put farmers at the center. Mr. Nelson is focused on building a robust agricultural economy that values nutrient dense crops, carbon neutral (maybe even negative) farms, and equitable supply chains. AgLaunch partners with Ag Ventures Alliance, an Iowa-based farmer cooperative, to implement a for-profit farmer network with membership across the United States. AgLaunch Farmers, LLC incubates nascent agtech companies and develops new value-added products leveraging field trials, data, and customer feedback. In its first three years of operation, AgLaunch portfolio companies created over 300 living wage jobs, raised over $100MM in venture capital and $20MM in non-diluted funding to support sustainable agriculture technologies to benefit farmers. His current role leading AgLaunch is a culmination of 25 years of farm-focused work in sustainable agriculture, alternative crops, bioenergy, plant biotechnology, and equitable innovation in the sector. Mr. Nelson has provided expert testimony to the US House Small Business Committee’s Subcommittee on Agriculture, Energy and Trade; co-edited and co-authored Plant Biomass Conversion published by Wiley & Co.; co-founded the first agtech accelerator and first exclusively ag-focused early-stage VC fund in the US; and co-founded the Biobased Manufacturers Association, a trade association that was instrumental in paving the way for the USDA Biopreferred program.
Gregory Ray
Cornell CREA & Johnson School
Website
I am an entrepreneurship program leader, teacher, and mentor at Cornell University, with nearly 7 years of experience in fostering deep-technology startup leaders. I’ve led innovation programs at esteemed institutions like UToronto, Georgia Tech, and NYU. Notable initiatives at Cornell include the Life Science Innovation Fellowship, Green Technology Innovation Fellowship, and the CREA Entrepreneurial Sprint program. I co-direct the Johnson Summer Startup Accelerator. I teach courses on entrepreneurship, strategy, and innovation at Cornell’s business school and instruct in the NSF I-Corps program. My background combines a PhD in Molecular Biology from Cornell with an MBA from the University of Toronto. Previously, I played a pivotal role in the growth and expansion of Creative Destruction Lab, a program for high-growth science-based startups.
Emily Reisman
University at Buffalo
Website
I am a human-environment geographer, science studies scholar, agroecologist, and Assistant Professor of Environment & Sustainability at the University at Buffalo in New York. I study the ecological politics of agricultural knowledge. My current book project examines how we come to know what crops “need” through a contrast of almond production paradigms in California and Spain. In collaboration with the Agri-Food Technology Research (AFTeR) project since 2018, I have researched Silicon Valley’s myriad forays into farming. My latest work centers on how automation is shifting conceptions of ecologically sustainable agriculture.
Paul Rous
Regenerate Ventures, Royal Agricultural University
Website
Paul is a Head of Ventures at Regenerate Asset Management, the UK’s first dedicated agtech fund, investing in sustainable agriculture, from soil to nutrition. He has over a decade of experience in venture capital, innovation, and agriculture. He founded two venture capital funds, Fuel Ventures and Blackfinch Ventures, and launched the UK’s first agritech accelerator, Shake Climate Change.
As a Consultant at Cognizant, he leads the digital agriculture roadmap to help develop solutions and capabilities to enhance customer experience and drive business growth. He holds an MBA from Imperial College London, where he received the Dean’s Award for sustainable business, an APM qualification in project management, and a membership of the Institute of Agricultural Management. Paul is also a PhD candidate at Royal Agricultural University, focussing on measuring agricultural innovation.
He is passionate about creating a positive impact through technology and finance and applying his agtech, sustainability, and innovation expertise to address global challenges.
Phoebe Sengers
Cornell University
Website
Phoebe Sengers is a professor in Information Science and Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University. Her work integrates ethnographic and historical analysis of the social implications of technology with design methods to suggest alternative future possibilities, with a focus on the effect of infrastructure in rural communities and how to improve its design. She is a member of the Cornell Initiative for Digital Agriculture. She led the Cornell campus of the Intel Science & Technology Center for Social Computing, has been a Fulbright Fellow, a Fellow in the Cornell Society for the Humanities, and a Public Voices Fellow, and received an NSF CAREER award. She holds an interdisciplinary PhD in Artificial Intelligence and Cultural Theory from Carnegie Mellon University.
Jenn Smith
Food and Ag Innovation Programs
Jenn Smith leads food and ag innovation programs for Cornell’s Center for Regional Economic Advancement, including the Grow-NY program, an annual $3M competition for innovative, early stage, high growth potential businesses working anywhere in the agrifood system. Through CREA she co-directs an ag tech hardware accelerator and runs a Dairy Product Innovation initiative and activities supporting the cultivation of Upstate New York‚Äôs regional agrifood ecosystem. In her role she draws on her background in entrepreneurship in the food and farming space and subject matter expertise in craft beverage market development, gained while the Executive Director of the New York Cider Association and the New York State Distillers Guild. In addition to leading NYCA and NYSDG, Jenn has helped entrepreneurs throughout the Northeast launch value-added products, agritourism ventures and hospitality businesses.
Phoebe Stephens
Dalhousie University
Website
Dr. Phoebe Stephens is an Assistant Professor in Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture at Dalhousie University’s Faculty of Agriculture. Phoebe adopts a political economy approach to explore sustainable food system transformation. She is particularly interested in the role of finance in encouraging transitions towards more resilient and sustainable food systems. Phoebe completed a SSHRC-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto (2022) and her PhD at the University of Waterloo in Social and Ecological Sustainability (2021).
John Tauzel
Environmental Defense Fund
Website
John Tauzel currently serves as senior director for Global Agriculture Methane at EDF. He facilitates EDF’s work to focus attention on the critical climate issue of agriculture methane, to spur development of innovative solutions to cut on-farm methane emissions, and to find pathways to support farmers in adopting new technologies and practices.
Prior to EDF he served at Dairy One, a farmer services cooperative providing laboratory services and data management for farmers and mentoring ag tech startups, served as CEO of an animal health startup focused on dairy cattle reproduction and was a lobbyist for New York Farm Bureau focusing on agriculture and environmental policy.
John is an Entrepreneur in Residence at Cornell University and often spends weekends on his family’s beef and crop farm in upstate New York. He holds a BS in Animal Science and an MBA from Cornell.
Larry Taylor
The Yield Lab Asia Pacific
Website
Larry is Co-Founder of The Yield Lab Asia Pacific, the Asia-dedicated Venture Capital Fund of The Yield Lab global network of Agtech Funds that invests in and advances seed-stage food, agricultural and aquaculture innovations for sustainable and scalable impact on global food security.
Larry has forty+ years of experience as a senior international executive building agriculture-technology based businesses in global markets, including 20 year living in Asian markets. Larry co-founded The Yield Lab Asia Pacific after a corporate career with Monsanto and Union Carbide, followed by Aziotics LLC, his own consulting firm.
Larry held key appointments in Monsanto: Founder of the ag business in Indonesia, CEO of Monsanto Japan agriculture business, Director of Commercialization for all new R&D technologies, Director for Global Strategy new global ventures. Across Asia, his professional career included on-the-ground operations in Indonesia, China, India, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.
Steven Wolf
Cornell University
Steven Wolf teaches and conducts research on environmental governance (i.e., interplay of state and non-state actors in environmental (mis)management). His research advances critical institutional analysis applied to agriculture, forests and environmental change with a specific focus on market-based conservation strategies. Recent collaborations with students and postdoctoral researchers focus on India, China, Mexico, and USA. Current work funded by NASA focuses on venture-capital funded entrepreneurship in agrifood innovation systems. Steven published the first critical social science analyses of precision farming in the mid 1990s.