Zach Ellis The Ohio State University Director of New Ventures Zach Ellis is Director of New Ventures at The Ohio State University. There, he is responsible for creating and cultivating spin out companies based on OSU technology. His portfolio responsibilities span all of life sciences, to include food and agriculture. Previously, Zach was on the…

Rob Trice Better Food Ventures and The Mixing Bowl Founder Rob Trice is the Founder of Better Food Ventures and The Mixing Bowl. Based in Silicon Valley, he is leveraging his experience in mobile, internet and telecom venture capital to pursue the application of information technology to food and agriculture challenges. Better Food Ventures makes…

Colin Hurd Smart Ag Founder and Chief Executive Officer Colin gradcolinuated from Iowa State University with a degree in Agriculture Business. After founding a company in 2013 called Agriculture Concepts he developed a revolutionary planting product called TrackTill® and shortly after added an additional product called CADEN Edge. After successfully growing sales to over $1.5…

Steven Brockshus Terva Chief Executive Officer – grew up on 5th generation family dairy farm in NW Iowa – took year off college serving as National FFA Vice President, meeting with students, farmers and ag leaders across the country – graduated from ISU in May 2017 (ag ed & entrepreneurship) – passionate about people, agriculture,…

Andrew Uden Quantified Ag Chief Operations Officer and Co-Founder Andrew Uden is Chief Operations Officer and a Co-Founder at Quantified Ag. He grew up on a cattle feeding and cow/calf operation started by his father in central Nebraska. Andrew attended the University of Nebraska where he took advantage of travel through mission, study, and work…

Dr. Todd Krone PowerPollen, LLC Founder and Chief Executive Officer Founder and Chief Executive Officer of PowerPollen, LLC, Dr. Todd Krone has over 20 years of research experience in the seed and biotech industry, including both research and leadership positions at Monsanto and DuPont Pioneer. His career has focused on applying molecular tools to enable…

Doug Dresslaer Sprint Accelerator Managing Director In his current role as Managing Director, Doug is responsible for all aspects of the Corporate Accelerator program from launch of program recruitment and operational delivery through evergreen tracking and facilitation of alumni companies. Doug’s focus on strategic alignment brings corporations and startups together to create their best possible…

Claire Kinlaw Larta Institute Director, Agriculture Practice Claire Kinlaw is the Director for Larta’s growing agriculture practice. She holds a PhD in biochemistry from Rice University where she studied transcription protein complexes and an MBA from UC Berkeley Haas School of Business where she focused on entrepreneurship. As a plant scientist Claire led applied science…

Mat Müller DuPont Pioneer Director of Business Development and Open Innovation Strategy Mat Müller is Director of Business Development and Open Innovation strategy at DuPont Pioneer. His focus is on the acquisition and integration of technology and innovation into DuPont’s Ag Biotech and Crop Genetics portfolios, the enablement and support of research scale, and the…