Senior Director - Innovation

Innovation Portfolio Strategy & Market Mapping

• Develop and maintain a strategic portfolio of innovation opportunities that can improve WG member competitiveness, with initial focus on chemical input alternatives, circular economy (biomass and other reuse streams), biomanufacturing, film, fiber and other packaging material alternatives, and other emerging innovation segments.
• Work with partners, including Plug and Play and Mixing Bowl, to identify startups in the AgTech segments above that are in the emerging and commercializing categories and then work on technical and business economics validation strategies to help provide information on the solutions to help growers make trial and purchase decisions.
• Identify the most promising innovation areas where WG can play a platform role by convening growers, validating solutions, accelerating pilots, publishing case studies, and building commercialization partnerships.
• Develop a prioritization framework for comparing innovation opportunities based on grower economics, market readiness, regulatory complexity, adoption barriers, environmental benefit, and ability to scale across WG member operations.
• Prepare regular updates for industry suppliers regarding market opportunities and grower needs in a 3-5 year time horizon to help them identify R&D / M&A opportunities.
• Prepare regular updates for WG leadership on portfolio progress, market trends, startup readiness, partnership opportunities, and potential member impact.

Chemical Input Alternatives, Biologicals, Genetics & Regenerative Agriculture

• Work with WG members, colleagues, startups, biologicals companies, seed and genetics companies, researchers, and crop advisors to identify solutions that can reduce chemical input dependency while preserving or improving crop outcomes.
• For promising innovation technologies, isolate a single key crop to measure results against and then work with the innovation team, grower partners, WG colleagues, and test partners to determine the baseline metrics and incremental improvement delivered in the test.
• Depending on the results of each test, determine if an internal tech validation tool or an external validation tool such as a WG Case Study is the appropriate mechanism to move forward.
• Work with partners to drive that result. Partners in this case may include UC ANR, co-op extension team members, Reservoir Farms, and WG Science colleagues.
• The primary objective for WG Science team members in this deliverable is establishing the correct key metrics to measure and how to measure them from a scientific perspective.
• This role will then execute and measure the tests and decide which steps to proceed with for each individual startup.
• The focus for this role will be on pre-market, new-to-the-market bio-controls that can replace or supplement pesticide functionality without traditional chemistry, with emphasis on effectiveness, reliability, cost, grower fit, and regulatory pathways.
• Evaluate: (1) genetics-based solutions that create crop resistance or resilience and reduce the need for chemical applications; (2) precision spraying solutions that optimize the efficiency of chemical applications; (3) regenerative agriculture solutions that measure the impact and incremental benefit of practice adoptions; and (4) UV light treatments for pests and pathogens.
• Finally, once all of the evaluations are complete, this role will develop a strategy for delivering practical grower-facing analysis that separates early-stage claims from commercially validated solutions and helps WG members understand where these categories are ready for adoption versus further field validation.
• From a WG Innovation team perspective, we are agnostic on which of the functional solution areas above deliver the best results – we just want to identify the best results from any segment.

AgTech Economic Analysis

• Working with colleagues in WG state, federal and science team as well as industry leaders develop a flexible framework for economic analysis of the complete portfolio of solutions for reducing chemistry usage in anticipation of usage restrictions from both governmental regulations and buyer specifications.
• The framework will provide a comparative analysis of solutions, including precision spraying, bio controls, genetics, regenerative ag practices, and UV light treatments.
• The economic outcome of this analysis will be to help align WG resources with both current and future innovation solutions that have a high potential for grower impact in terms of mitigating the risk of chemical applications getting regulated (restricted or banned).
• Solution segments with high impact potential commercialization outcomes will be the focus of this role.
• Making the baseline metrics and the incremental progress from solutions will be a key deliverable for this role.
• The output is targeted to match the economic analysis with the portfolio of solutions.