Meet the AgFunder Team

Michael Dean, LLM
PARTNER

Michael is an entrepreneur and venture investor with a background in agriculture, environmental sustainability, social impact and law.

Manuel Gonzalez, MBA
PARTNER

Manuel is the former Global Head of F&A Startup Innovation at Rabobank and Founder of FoodBytes!

Rob Leclerc, PhD
PARTNER

Rob is a leading expert on food & agtech with a PhD from Yale University.

Tom Shields
PARTNER

Tom has started two tech companies with over $100m exits and was MD at a $300m early-stage VC fund.

John Friedman
DIRECTOR

Asia based investment specialist with a passion for technology driven impact and sustainability

Quinten Eggink
INVESTOR

Quinten studied math and economics and interned at SOSV's biotech accelerator IndieBio before joining AgFunder.

Angela Tay
INVESTOR

Angela is an experienced financial services professional with a background in investment analysis and communications.

Dianne Mae Omoso-Pribhdas
EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT

Dianne is a super skilled executive assistant with over the 10 years of experience in customer service, administrative support, and marketing.

Sofia Ramirez
VENTURE PARTNER

Sofia is a business professional with broad experience in AgriFood technology

Andrew Finkelstein
ASSOCIATE

Andrew is an MBA candidate at the Darden School of Business. His background is in high growth startup leadership and sales strategy.

Ryan Lee
Investor

Ryan graduated with a degree in environmental engineering and is an alumnus of the NUS Overseas College (NOC) program.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor
MANAGING EDITOR & HEAD OF MEDIA & RESEARCH

Louisa is a globally-recognized journalist and thought leader for the food & agriculture industry.

Elaine Watson
GLOBAL FOOD TECH EDITOR

Elaine is a journalist and editor with 20+ years' experience covering the food industry in the UK and the US.

Jennifer Marston
GLOBAL AGTECH EDITOR

Jenn is a senior reporter and editor with a decade of experience covering technology

Robin R Chauhan
HEAD OF ENGINEERING

VC Engineering = Σ { Software, AI, Data } Engineering + Domain expertise

Sam Clarke
SENIOR DEVELOPER

Experienced full stack developer with background in Microbiology and Toxicology.

John Denniston, JD
INVESTMENT ADVISORY COMMITTEE

John is a former Senior Partner at Kleiner Perkins and is Chairman of Shared-X which is closing the Yield Gap in Emerging Markets

Paul Matteucci, MBA
INVESTMENT ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Paul Matteucci is a Partner at US Venture Partners and founder of FoodCrunch.

Justin Bruch, MBA
ADVISORY BOARD CHAIRMAN

A leading agronomist, Justin has managed large-scale farms on four continents and is a frequent speaker at global Ag conferences.

Brad Farquhar
SENIOR ADVISOR

Co-founder and CFO of Input Capital Corp., the world's first agriculture streaming company.

Adam Hanft
SENIOR ADVISOR

An internationally-known marketing and branding expert, Adam is founder and CEO of Hanft Projects, a boutique, special-opps brand strategy firm.

Ivo Petrov
SENIOR ADVISOR

Former Director at Cargill & Portfolio Manager at BlackRiver

John Simon, Ambassador
SENIOR ADVISOR

Served as US Ambassador to the African Union, Special Assistant to the President, and Executive VP of the Overseas Investment Corp.

Patrick Vizzone, MBA
SENIOR ADVISOR

Patrick is the Asian Head of Institutional Banking at National Australia Bank and is a Board Member of COFCO's China Agri-Industries Holdings.