LEWIS & CLARK AGRIFOOD

Susannah Ball

Susannah is the Product Line Manager of Ball Horticultural Company, a global breeder and distributor of ornamental flowers and plants.  At Ball, she works in vegetable product development and oversees distribution for Chile and Mexico.

Prior to returning to the Chicago area to join the Ball family business, Susannah worked on a sustainable livestock farm, Stone & Thistle, in upstate New York where she raised hogs, broiler chickens, cattle, sheep and dairy goats for 8 years.  When not managing the farm or working various NYC farmers markets, she helped out on a friend’s organic vegetable CSA.

Ms. Ball completed her studies at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, Loyola University, and the University of Cambridge.

In her spare time, Susannah enjoys running, exploring local forests, and continues her passion for animal husbandry by having too many pets in her apartment.

Cees Boonman

Cees (Case) Boonman was President of Ball Seed Company, that services over 7,000 commercial greenhouse flower growers in North America.  Mr. Boonman retired from Ball in 2016 after 22 years of service.  

Prior to joining Ball, he held several senior management positions with leading firms in the vegetable seed industry, including general management roles in European markets and in the U.S.  

Mr. Boonman is a native of The Netherlands.  He earned a Master’s degree in International Business from Catholic University in Tilburg, The Netherlands. 

Dave Dressel

As an AgriFood Advisory Group member, Dave Dressel brings more than 30 years of experience in the pet food, animal feed, and food ingredients industries. Dave is both Partner and Owner of Diversified Ingredients, a leading supplier of pet food, dairy, feed, and food ingredients located in St. Louis County.

Thanks to Dave’s vision, Diversified Ingredients also owns Ingredient Logistics Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of Diversified Ingredients founded in 2015. This company handles all of Diversified Ingredients’ logistical needs, is asset-based with operations in Pennsylvania and Southwest Missouri, and is a registered 3PL (third-party logistics). Dave is also the Founder, Partner, and Owner of Ingredient Distribution Services. Formed in 2018, Ingredient Distribution Services is an importer of animal proteins and starches, with its own storage facility in Southwest Missouri.

Along with partner Johnson Farms, Diversified Ingredients recently purchased Foremost Farms’ Minnesota-based drying plant. The new company, Preston Protein Products, is a producer and contract dryer for whey proteins, milk powders, and buttermilk powders. Preston Protein Products is a certified organic facility.

Dave holds a BSBA in Finance from the University of Missouri- Columbia.

Robb Fraley, PhD

Dr. Robert (Robb) Fraley is the former Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Monsanto Company. He is widely recognized as a key contributor to the worldwide science and agriculture communities – most notably, for developing the first genetically modified crops as a solution for farmers battling pests and weeds that threatened yields and food production.

He grew up on a small farm near Hoopeston, IL and attended the University of Illinois, where he earned a PhD in Microbiology and Biochemistry. Throughout his career, Robb has authored more than 100 publications and patent applications relating to technical advances in agricultural sciences. Recognitions for his contributions include being a recipient of: The National Medal of Technology (1998), The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center Distinguished Service Award (2007), The World Food Prize (2013) and The of the Order of Lincoln (2020).

Today, Robb resides with his wife, Laura, in St. Louis and in his newest role, he has become a leading voice for agriculture, passionately working to reset the public conversation about science. As he often says, “We can develop the greatest scientific innovations the world has ever seen, but if we can’t find ways to communicate and engage more effectively, nothing else will matter.”

Mark Izzo, PhD

Mark is an entrepreneurial-minded research & development executive with significant experience driving innovation at large CPG companies, as well as general management of ingredient suppliers and small CPG. In his current role as SVP and Chief Disruption Officer at Post Holdings, Mark seeks to create value organically by leveraging emerging disruptive technologies to drive the creation of new food markets. Izzo leads a disruptive innovation team that incorporates full-service launch capabilities in one place… with dedicated sales, marketing, and supply chain functions supported by a broad network of Post Holdings functions enabling rapid business setup.

As the former Vice President of R&D at Pinnacle Foods, Mark led product development across a diverse portfolio including Birdseye, Hungry Man, Duncan Hines, Wishbone, and Vlasic. Among other initiatives, Mark collaborated across the organization to develop and execute a strategy resulting in the launch of several $100+ million innovation platforms across frozen and bakery R&D.

Prior to his role at Pinnacle Foods, Mark served as Vice President of R&D and Innovation at Post Holdings, where he managed a diverse innovation portfolio across breakfast and snacking. He created and led a cross-functional team that spearheaded joint concept/product development with major retailers, resulting in two Walmart test markets and multiple category leading launches. He also teamed with Post’s sales force to form a Costco business team and develop a Costco-specific pipeline. Additionally, Mark led the integration of PowerBar R&D from Nestle into Post R&D and transitioned existing product lines from in-house to external manufacturing.

Mark also served in R&D leadership roles at the Campbell Soup Company (leading product development for Campbell’s US-branded businesses including beverages, sauces, and pasta meals), Post Foods LLC (managing the R&D organization responsible for product, process, and packaging development for a diverse $1B+ portfolio of cereal brands), Nutraterra LLC (creating and launching a high-end brand of snacks and beverages), and Orafti North America (creating a market-leading nutraceutical ingredient business by selling a prebiotic fiber to the US market).

Both a successful business leader and an accomplished scientist, Mark also worked as a Senior Research Scientist for M&M Mars. He holds a BS in Biochemistry, an MS in Food Science, and a PhD in Food Science, all from Rutgers University.

Robert Lumpkins

Bob Lumpkins is a career ag and commodity executive.  He spent 38 years with Cargill Inc. in a series of financial and general management positions, retiring as Vice Chairman in 2006.  While at Cargill, he put together the merger of Cargill’s fertilizer business with publicly-traded IMC Global to form The Mosaic Company, a Fortune-500 leader in phosphate and potash fertilizers.  Bob served as Chairman of Mosaic from its 2004 founding until stepping down in 2018.

He currently serves as a senior advisor to Varde Partners, a global credit-oriented alternative asset manager, and on the advisory board of private equity investor Metalmark Capital.  He has been an independent director of several multinational companies, a Trustee of Howard University and of the Educational Testing Service.

He has a B.S. in Mathematics with honors from the University of Notre Dame, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Kim Nicholson

Kim grew up in the heart of the Midwest in Indiana, graduated with a degree in agronomy from Purdue University, and has dedicated over 30 years to the agribusiness industry. She has proven experience in the areas of strategic planning and innovation, brand development, sales leadership, general management and operations.

Kim joined The Mosaic Company in 2019 as VP AgTech & Innovation, Strategy & Growth, to serve on the Global Strategy Team focused on R&D and innovation related to Mosaic products and services.

Before joining Mosaic, Kim founded NFocus Partners a boutique consultancy in 2009. She served both small start-up companies bringing technology, products and services to the industry and established companies looking for creative and pragmatic strategy and solutions to growing their business.

Prior to NFocus, Kim led the consumer products division of Chemtura corporation, where she managed the global enterprise with 900 employees and 5 dedicated manufacturing facilities in North America, Europe, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. During her tenure, she served as a change agent to re-structure and reduce division costs, improve margin and focus resources on the most profitable segments of the enterprise. Prior to her appointment as Group President, she led the US sales team for the BioLab division.

Before joining Chemtura, she held the position of VP of Sales and Marketing of Nutra-Park, Inc., a biotech firm specializing in plant growth regulators. She developed and executed the comprehensive sales and marketing plan for the launch of the company’s product portfolio and designed an innovative “grower to grocer” revenue strategy.

Kim served as Director of Global Supply Chain for BASF, where she managed project groups in Europe, North America and Latin America. She optimized projects and processes in the manufacturing and supply chain organization. She joined BASF as National Sales Manager for the US crop protection division, post acquisition of American Cyanamid, leading the integration and restructuring of the team.

Kim began her career with American Cyanamid’s crop protection division, taking on increased levels of responsibilities for market and brand development, including the launch of two brands and revitalization of two others. She managed the promotions and programs for the company’s 2000+ member AgriCenter™ dealer network in her role as Director of Retail Distribution.

Edmund O’Keeffe

Edmund O’Keeffe has over 25 years experience in management and board roles in the food and beverage sector in both North America and Europe. He is Chairman of O’Keeffes Group, an Irish retailer with pet, furniture and wine stores. He serves on a number of boards: Bay State Milling, a leading North American flour milling and specialty grain company, Main Street Gourmet Bakery, a private equity backed US bakery focused on the instore bakery channel and BinSentry, a Canadian innovator of things solution technology provider to the grain industry. Prior board experience includes Liberte Brands, Canada’s leading organic dairy and Pineridge Bakery.

Edmund served in a variety of roles from 1994 to 2019 for Cott Corporation, the world’s largest producer of beverages on behalf of retailers, brand owners and distributors. Joining Cott in its early growth phase he progressed into positions in Product Management, Strategy, Corporate Development, Investor Relations, Communications and Strategic Planning. Most recently he was President of Cott Beverages LLC, responsible for an $80 MM 130 employee business unit that provided global R&D, product development, technical services, concentrates and sales to 67 countries. Prior to this role, Edmund served as President of Cott’s Royal Crown Cola International, a branded franchise beverage portfolio with bottlers across 64 countries.

Edmund graduated from University College Dublin with a Bachelor of Commerce and earned his MBA from Harvard Business School. He was a former Research Associate for Professor Ray Goldberg at Harvard Business School and is currently a member of Harvard University’s Private and Public, Scientific, Academic, and Consumer (PAPSAC) Food Policy Group.

Shari Rogge-Fidler

As a Lewis & Clark AgriFood Advisory Group member, Shari brings extensive strategic experience leading multi-stakeholder organizations. She currently serves as President and CEO of Farm Foundation, where she leads operational improvements, establishes new programs (including those that expand diversity), and initiates the vision process alongside the Board.

A fifth-generation farm owner herself, Shari provides firsthand knowledge regarding the integration of precision AgTech tools into day-to-day operations. Before taking the lead role at the Farm Foundation, Shari served as CEO of Illinois-based Family Farms, LLC, an enterprise of five companies providing business, financial, and farm input services to around 1,000 farms throughout the U.S. and Canada. She also led overall value creation, growth strategy, and commercialization for the New Hampshire-based data analytics technology firm Applied GeoSolutions, LLC; prior to that, she founded (and served as president of) Cambium Strategies, LLC. During her six years at Cambium, Shari led strategy projects for a range of food and agriculture organizations from Fortune 200 companies to mid-sized firms to global NGOs.   

Shari is highly effective in strategic business problem-solving and communication, having served as a Global Coach for MBACASE.com and as the co-director of the consulting academy at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. She also conducted strategic analysis with the Boston Consulting Group (London, England) and, while working as an Institutional Sales Executive for London-based McKinley Allsop Limited, initiated European market expansion.

Currently, Shari sits on the St. Louis Federal Reserve Board, The Nature Conservancy Board of Trustees, and the Soil Health Institute Board of Directors (Executive Committee). She previously held board-level positions at Coastal Pet Products Inc., Farm Credit Mid-America, SEED Corp, and the Local Growers Guild.    

Shari holds an MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration and a BS in Business Administration from the University of Kansas. She is an active Harvard alumna, serving on two fundraising committees, including one for an endowed chair in honor of her professor Ray Goldberg, the “founding father” of agribusiness. 

David Russell, PhD

David Russell is a former member of the Lewis & Clark AgriFood team where he focused on plant productivity, farm productivity, and supply chain efficiency for our Funds. Prior to joining Lewis & Clark, David led Monsanto’s Biotechnology Prospecting Team looking for innovative opportunities to support the Monsanto agriculture technology platforms. As part of this effort, he continued to build an extensive Ag Tech network including research institutes, universities, start-ups, and agriculture companies.

In a previous role, David helped lead the development of animal feed and grain processing traits as part of the Renessen LLC JV. At Renessen, David was V.P. of Product Development & Technology and led the technology, product development and regulatory science functions. He started his Ag career with Agracetus, Inc., an early Ag biotec startup, where he led teams developing new seeds traits and investigating novel plant seed approaches to animal nutrition and human health.

David received his B.S. from U of Minnesota, Morris, his PhD from Rice University in microbial gene expression, and did a NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard University exploring light regulation in corn.

Martha Schlicher, PhD

Dr. Martha Schlicher currently serves an Entrepreneur in Resident at BioGenerator, a part of BioSTL focused on investments in the Agri Food Tech space as well as the CEO of two early stage agricultural startups:  Impetus Agricultural Co and Plastomics, Inc.. Dr. Schlicher has more than 30 years of global experience leading the identification, development, commercialization, strategy, marketing and sales of new life sciences technologies and in the turnaround of organizations seeking new growth trajectories.

She most recently served as the CTO of Mallinckrodt Specialty Generics where she had responsibility for research and development, clinical pharmacology and development, program and portfolio strategy and management and regulatory sciences for the development and support of new generic drug products and new development platforms. Prior

Previously, Dr. Schlicher served as the vice president of corporate social responsibility, sustainability and stakeholder engagement at Monsanto. Additional leadership roles at Monsanto included new product crop strategy and development, environmental and regulatory science and policy, sales and marketing and Office of the President.  She has additionally held roles leading business development at Divergence, an Ag tech start up sold to Monsanto, and GTL Resources, a renewable energy company sold to CHS.

Dr. Schlicher currently serves on the board at Greenlight Biosciences, the St. Louis College of Pharmacy and the Scientific Advisory Board for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. She previously served on the board of GTL, publicly traded on the London AIM, the board of privately held, Illinois River Bioenergy, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board to Secretary Moniz, as a Trustee for the St. Louis Academy of Science, and as a  member of the United States Department of Energy Biological and Environmental Research Advisory Committee, and as an industry advisor to the International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy Research at Washington University in St. Louis, and the Department of Agricultural Economics at University of Missouri – Columbia.

Dr. Schlicher holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Indiana University, a doctor of philosophy degree in organic chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an MBA from Northwestern University.

Ian Ward, PhD

Ian Ward serves as the Chief Growth Officer for Rahr Corporation, charged with the identification, evaluation and guiding strategic initiatives and investments in Rahr’s operating business units and passive investments taking on the role in March 2020. Ian joined Rahr Corp in 2004, when Rahr acquired Brewers Wholesale Inc. forming the BSG business unit, distributing malt, hops and other brewing ingredients to the craft brewing, winemaking and distilling industries.

From 2004 until 2006 he led the sales team as Commercial VP and in 2006 was promoted to the role of President. During his leadership BSG grew from three operation centers to fourteen across North America with a CAGR growth rate in excess of 25% over 15 years. He led three acquisitions in the U.S and one in Canada, which added four additional sites. In 2011 he led the purchase of a 10-acre apple processing facility in the Yakima Valley for conversion to hop processing and storage. In 2017 he created the BSGi business unit and made two acquisitions. The first: Bevie with operations in New Zealand, UK, Holland and Australia, and later in 2018 invested in a Joint Venture- Bintani with four locations across Australia.  He serves on the Boards of both Bevie and Bintani.

He has presented at numerous conferences and meetings throughout North America and Europe on the topics of enzymology, beer clarification and stabilization and latterly the malt and hop industries.

Prior to his work in the U.S. Ian worked for Savilles Clarification, then part of the Laporte Group, as an R&D chemist.  Published a number of papers on beer clarification and filed a UK Patent for a novel clarification procedure.

Ian received his PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of Birmingham in the UK, his research focused on using ¹H and ¹³C nuclear magnetic resonance studies of borate complexes of phenol-formaldehyde polymers used as foundry binders. His undergraduate research focused on lithium ion conducting polymers also at the University of Birmingham receiving a BSc (Hons) in Chemistry.