Selected Engagements · 30 Years
Proof, not promises.
Each one traces the same pattern: find where commercial value is trapped, build the strategy to unlock it, and execute through partnerships, capital, and teams.
FOOD INGREDIENTS · BIOTECHNOLOGY
Spinning a food-tech company out of a biotechnology platform
Smallfood, Inc. (spin-off from Synthetic Genomics) - Chief Business Officer
Proprietary technology with real promise as a food-ingredient platform sat trapped inside a biotech parent whose commercial focus was elsewhere. The work: carve the IP out into a standalone company, capitalize it, build an executive team from scratch, and prove commercial demand - all in parallel, against one unified commercial story.
The deal didn't close on a single pitch. It closed because investors, customers, and a new executive team were all moving down their tracks at once - against one story.
FUNCTIONAL FOOD INGREDIENTS · OMEGA-3
Doubling food sales in three years at Ocean Nutrition Canada
Ocean Nutrition Canada (acquired by DSM, 2012) - Director, North America Food Ingredients
An established ingredient business plateaued at commodity-level margins. The opportunity wasn't to sell more of the same - it was to shift the mix toward higher-value, branded applications inside consumer packaged goods, and set a performance culture where results, not activity, drove the metrics.
Selected as one of five Matrix Team Leaders to align R&D, regulatory, sales, and marketing that had run in parallel before.
VEGETABLE OILS · AGRICULTURAL COMMODITIES
Turning a commodity into a brand at Cargill
Cargill, Inc. - Regional Account Manager (Gainesville, GA); prior Commercial Manager & Commodity Merchant
Vegetable oil sold into industrial channels was, by definition, commodity business - priced off the board, sold by the truckload, margins compressed by everyone doing exactly the same thing. The conventional playbook fought for share on price. I took the opposite approach: stop selling the commodity as a commodity.
The category had decided it was a commodity. The customers hadn't - they just hadn't been offered anything else.
B2C CONSUMER BRANDS · B2B GLOBAL FOOD MANUFACTURING
Bringing two international businesses into the U.S. market
Strategia3, LLC - Founder
Two international companies wanted to enter the U.S. - each with a strong home-market foundation but none of the U.S. infrastructure to land here: product strategy, advisory bench, manufacturing relationships, or funding. They needed an operator on the ground to build all of it in parallel.
Most market-entry work delivers a plan and stops. This delivered the plan, the team, the factory, the money - and products on shelves in six months.
FUNCTIONAL MUSHROOMS · NUTRACEUTICAL BIOACTIVES
Finding a bioactives business hidden inside a mushroom producer
Strategic Review & Repositioning
The company was selling premium mushrooms as a powder - a commodity, priced against far larger growers and overseas suppliers in a race to the bottom. But the real asset was never the powder. A proprietary genetics platform and a clinical-and-analytical lab capability sat underused, with no commercial story attached. My read: stop being a mushroom producer and become a science-based bioactives company - extracting high-value compounds, starting with a natural caffeine alternative, for the fast-growing functional-beverage and premium pet-food markets.
The company had decided it was a mushroom-powder business. Its own genetics said otherwise - the premium was sitting in their lab the whole time.