Meet the Team
Thad Simons is Board President of the International Food and Agribusiness Association (IFAMA) and former President and Chief Executive Officer of Novus International, Inc. From 2001 to 2014, he led Novus in its growth into a global animal health and nutrition company with sales exceeding US $1 billion.
Thad’s awards and recognitions include: International Businessperson of the Year, Agribusiness Leader of the Year, and Entrepreneur of the Year.
Jeff Peterson
Chris Danforth is a General Partner with the Cultivation Capital Life Science fund and an Investment Committee member of the Cultivation Capital Technology Fund. Chris also sits on the Board of Directors of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and is Chairman of the Board of Kennelwood Pet Resorts.
Thad Simons
Managing Directors
Chris Danforth
Jeff Peterson is on the board of the Center for Emerging Technologies in St Louis as an Executive Team member. He previously worked for Monsanto’s strategy group, as Vice President of Strategic Negotiations. He has also served as the Chairman of the Board for Thrive St Louis.
Jeff graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. Degree in Mechanical Engineering, and received an MBA from the Cornell University Johnson Graduate School of Management.
Tom Adamitis
Tom Adamitis formerly served as the Global Vice President of Raw Materials and Energy Procurement for Anheuser-Busch InBev, one of the world’s largest consumer product companies. He supported ABI’s global brewery footprint and managed annual spend exceeding $4.5 billion.
Tom earned his Bachelor of Science degree in accounting from the University of Illinois. He later received his MBA from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.
Brian Clevinger
Brian L. Clevinger is a founder and managing director of Prolog Ventures. Before Prolog, he was the CEO of Megan Health, a vaccine developer. He held this position from Megan's inception until its acquisition by AVANT Immunotherapeutics. Previously, he was the president of A/W Company, a technology transfer partnership of the private equity firm Alafi Capital and Washington University. Before joining A/W Company, he held a tenured position and headed a research laboratory at Washington University.
Brian holds a doctoral degree in immunology from Indiana University and was a NIH postdoctoral fellowship at Washington University.
Advisors
Jerry Steiner
Jerry Steiner served as an Executive Vice President of Sustainability and Corporate Affairs at Monsanto. He serves as a Director and Vice Chairman of the Food and Agriculture Section at Biotechnology Industry Organization. He is also a Founder and Board Member of the Global Harvest Initiative.
Jerry holds an M.B.A. from Washington University and a B.S. in Agricultural Economics from University of Wisconsin.
Eric Jackson
Eric Jackson has over 30 years of commercial agriculture experience. He has served as Market Development Manager for the Pillsbury Company, CEO & President of International Proteins Corporation, and Senior Vice President and Director of the Scoular Company. He co-founded CP Holdings LLC and served as CEO-in-Residence for Renewable Energy with the Office for Technology Commercialization at the University of Minnesota. As co-founder of Conservis Corp, he currently serves as President of Ag Services.
James P. McCarter,
M.D.,Ph.D.
James McCarter is a leading St. Louis-based bioentrepreneur. He was the Founder, President, and Chief Scientific Officer of Divergence, Inc., a world leader in the application of genomics and informatics to agriculture and infectious disease.
He completed his medical and doctoral training at Washington University, receiving the Victor Hamburger Prize in developmental biology. Dr. McCarter was an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) with Monsanto Growth Ventures and is currently a Senior EIR with BioGenerator.
Sam Fiorello
Patrick J.Moore
Steve Trampe
Sam Fiorello is Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice President for Administration and Finance at The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center.
He is also President of Bio-Research & Development Growth Park (BRDG Park) on the Danforth Center campus. Sam earned a B.A. in Business from the University of Wisconsin and an M.A. in Public Administration from the University of Texas.
Patrick J. Moore is the President and CEO of PJM Advisors, LLC, a private equity investment and advisory firm which maintains an affiliate relationship with a large New York-based private equity firm.
He is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Smurfit-Stone Container Corporation. He also serves as a director of Archer Daniels Midland Company and Exelis, Inc. while also serving on the North American Review Board of American Air Liquide Holdings, Inc.
Ryan Rakestraw
Steve Trampe founded or co-founded seven different companies in five different industries. He is currently Chairman of Sequoia Sciences, a plant based drug discovery company and is a very active director of Elemental Enzymes, a stabilized enzyme company involved in the agricultural industry. Steve is also Chairman of the Building Arts Foundation, Vice Chairman of Opera America and a principal in Owen Development.
He has judged numerous business plan competitions, mentored many start-up companies and heard and reviewed hundreds of investment proposals.
Jim Hoffmeister
Dr. Ganesh Kishore
Jim Hoffmeister is currently the Owner and Chairman of Wydown Hotel in St. Helena, California. Jim has executive level experience leading Fortune 100, privately held and self-owned businesses. Jim was Group VP and member of Strategy Committee of Anheuser-Busch Companies from 1967-2006. He has also served as CEO of Wherenberg Theaters & Real Estate Company as well as CEO of W.K. Busch Brewing Company.
Jim is also an internal Board member of all Anheuser-Busch subsidiaries, Board Member of Delta Dental, Advisory Board Member for multiple University of Missouri Committees, Chairman of the Advisory Board to the Salvation Army, Advisory Board member of Sisters of St. Mary Hospital, Chairman of Busch Soccer Club, tutors university and high school students and is a volunteer coach.
Ryan Rakestraw is an Investment Principal at Monsanto. Prior to joining Monsanto, Ryan was the driving force behind the creation of the Yield Lab, also a Principal of the Life Science Fund of Cultivation Capital. Ryan was a systems engineer with Northrop Grumman where he helped to design and implement military platforms ranging from undersea to space applications. Ryan has a bachelor’s of science in electrical engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, a master’s of science in electrical engineering from Johns Hopkins, and an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis. Ryan co-founded Unite4Kids (unite4kids.org), an organization which supports children who have suffered from abuse or neglect. Ryan also sits on the board of Employment Connection St. Louis, an organization with the mission of assisting people with limited job opportunities to become self-sufficient.
Dr. Kishore has a distinguished track record of accomplishments in biotechnology research and development and business. He left DuPont in 2007 where he was Chief Biotechnology Officer to join Malaysian Life Sciences Capital Fund (MLSCF) as its CEO and later cofounded Spruce Capital Partners in 2013.
Dr. Kishore is an entrepreneur and has co-founded three successful entities since 2002. Two of the three entities are now parts of publicly traded entities (Tata/Rallis in India and Evolva in Switzerland) while the third business entity (Mogene LC in USA) serves both as an incubator of new ideas as well as a provider of genomic services across agriculture, health care and environment. He serves on the board of three publicly listed entities, three privately held companies and the Advisory Board of Washington University. He is also an advisor to multinational companies and Scientific American.
Alan McGregor
Alan McGregor farms with this two brothers in Nashua, Iowa - it is a fourth generation family farm with his son joining the operation. The family operates a 3,000 acre corn and soybean farm. They also have a 1,200 head beef feedlot and 150 head beef cow-calf herd.
Rick Greubel
Chris Knight
Chris Knight's goal is to advise and assist creative start up ventures with a desire to apply their technologies in the livestock industry either through animal nutrition or animal health. His 30+ years of experience in a global company with leadership roles in research, product development and business development have provided him with a variety of experiences and a broad network of collaborators.
Bill Davies
William Davies has worked in the animal health industry since 1972. During his career he has operated in a management capacity for companies such as JenSal Laboratories, Solvay Animal Health, Syntro Corporation, Benchmark Biolabs and Pacific Vet Group. Bill’s involvement with entrepreneurial ventures over the past 30 years have included founding and building successful technology based companies addressing global opportunities for poultry, swine, cattle, and companion animals.
Rick Greubel serves as Kaiima's Chief Executive Officer since 2015. Rick most recently worked as President of the Human Nutrition & Health for DSM (2010 to 2015) , the world's leading supplier of nutritional ingredients to the Pharma, food and feed industries.
Previously, Rick served as a Group VP and International President at Tyson Foods (2006 to 2010) and before that held a number of positions at Monsanto (1984-2006). While President of Monsanto Brazil (2001-2006), Rick was responsible for the seeds, traits and herbicide business. Rick has a B.Sc. in Microbiology from the University of Missouri-Columbia and is a graduate of theUniversity of Pennsylvania Wharton School AMP program.
Principal
Matt Plummer is the Principal at Yield Lab. Matt is responsible for the day to day investment and accelerator operations and driving the strategy of the Yield Lab.
Matt graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in Political Science. From 2006-2014, Matt lived in Salt Lake City attending school and was a competing member of the U.S. Speedskating Team. While retired from competition, Matt still remains an active part of the U.S. Speedskating organization and serves on its Board of Directors and Chair of the Athletes' Advisory Council.
After Matt returned to St. Louis in January 2014, he worked for the start up company Arvegenix before joining the Yield Lab.
Matt is currently enrolled in the Washington University in St. Louis MBA program expecting to graduate in 2018.