Senior Director - Innovation

Western Growers Family of Companies•Salinas, CA

1d•Remote

About The Position

This position is responsible for advancing a portfolio of high-potential innovation opportunities that can improve the competitiveness, profitability, and resilience of Western Growers members. This position works directly with the organization’s members, colleagues, agricultural industry, startups, researchers, industry partners, and investors to identify, validate, and scale innovation solutions in priority segments beyond automation. The position works to leverage the WG Innovation team’s automation platform elements to focus on identifying new innovations, evaluating the provider and technology, and providing feedback to WG members on those that are showing promise and/or commercializing successfully. The key focus areas for this position includes chemical crop input alternatives such as biologicals (with a focus on bio-controls), genetics (with a focus on pathogen and pest resistance), and regenerative agriculture practices. The key requirement for this position is to own the innovation funnel from identification of technical innovation in any of these key areas and then push the identified innovations through an evaluation process with results shared with WG members. An additional area this role will work with in a similar platform fashion is the circular economy. With this portion of the role, the focus will be to identify innovators in the circular economy that is based largely on woody biomass (often from orchards and vineyards) and food waste streams from food production facilities (Including packaged salad and other processing facilities). The final element to focus on in this segment is the innovation around films, fibers, and other materials with, cost-parity, utility and scalability as alternatives to current approaches in fresh produce packaging in response to increasing regulatory pressure. This role applies the commercialization model developed for automation - including grower discovery, startup evaluation, field validation, economic analysis, case studies, strategic partnerships, accelerator relationships, and industry events where thought leadership can be demonstrated. The role will help solutions move from promising concept to commercial adoption faster and with improved economics. This position reports to the Senior Vice President of Innovation and is expected to operate as a senior-level individual contributor with substantial autonomy, external visibility, and responsibility for building platforms and partnerships across the innovation ecosystem.

Requirements

Master’s degree (MBA, Masters of Science, or equivalent) degree and ten (10) years of direct experience in fresh produce industry agriculture operations, AgTech, biologicals, crop inputs, sustainability, circular economy, biomanufacturing, produce packaging, food systems innovation, or related commercialization roles preferred.
Proven record of working with growers, shippers, startup companies, researchers, industry partners, or technology providers to evaluate whether innovation solutions are ready for commercialization and scale.
Strong understanding of specialty crop production economics, grower decision-making, operational risk, labor constraints, crop protection needs, food safety requirements, and the practical requirements for adopting new technologies in production agriculture.
Ability to evaluate innovation opportunities across multiple technical categories, including biologicals and bio-controls, genetics and crop resistance, regenerative agriculture practices, circular economy, biomanufacturing, biomass and food waste streams, plastic packaging alternatives, and other emerging segments.
Proven record of developing economic frameworks for solution evaluation, including grower ROI, cost reduction, yield protection, risk reduction, sustainability outcomes, labor impact, input reduction, and implementation complexity.
Ability to develop strategies for deeper integration with startups, growers, commodity groups, input suppliers, processors, packaging companies, research institutions, accelerator partners, corporate partners, and investors.
Proven ability to develop and manage partner efforts with minimal supervision, including field trials, case studies, events, grower education, startup toolkits, strategic partnerships, pilot programs, and industry-facing communications.
High degree of flexibility and autonomy, with the ability to prioritize competing opportunities and produce the best outcomes for WG growers, startups, and innovation partners.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to translate technical innovation topics into practical grower economics and industry adoption pathways.
Internet access provided by a cable or fiber provider with 40 MB download and 10 MB upload speeds.
Home router with wired Ethernet (wireless connections and hotspots are not permitted).
A designated room for your office or steps taken to protect company information (e.g., facing computer towards wall, etc.).
A functioning smoke detector, fire extinguisher, and first aid kit on site.
Verifiable, clean DMV record and the ability to travel to various locations throughout the U.S. (mainly California and Arizona) up to 50% of the time.

Responsibilities

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.
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. This role will not focus on bio-stimulants.
The role will also 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.
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.
Measuring the baseline metrics and the incremental progress from solutions will be a key deliverable for this role. The output is targeted to match the current WG Case Studies for automation solutions in format and detail, but with metrics that are appropriate for the chemistry alternatives portfolio. This role will require working closely with multiple departments inside WG member organizations to measure cross-department economic baseline analysis and incremental impact analysis.
Similar to the Automation Platform that extends into biological, genetics, and regenerative ag innovations, this role will develop WG’s innovation platform around circular economy opportunities in films, fibers and other materials through reuse, recycling, and value-added conversion of biomass, crop residues, processing byproducts, food production waste streams, and other agricultural residuals.
Identify biomanufacturing innovation opportunities that can create new markets, new products, reduced waste, or new revenue streams for growers and processors.
Work with innovators to identify industry partners to work with to evaluate feedstock availability, logistics, processing requirements, economics, policy incentives, and potential commercialization pathways for circular economy and biomanufacturing solutions.
Once innovation technologies are evaluated, leverage the WG Innovation platform to develop case studies and market intelligence on the likely economic impact and conditions to achieve the impact if purchased by WG members.
Work with WG members and innovation companies to validate that solutions are ready for commercialization and scale and meet the requirements of grower economics.
Develop regular communication channels with growers, startups, researchers, and industry partners to evaluate solution readiness, trial design, field performance, adoption barriers, and commercialization pathways.
Work with education and research partners on roadmaps for field validation, including early technical validation, scaled operational validation, and grower economic validation.
Work with WG members and growers from partner organizations on trials that answer the core commercialization questions: does it work, does it work at scale, and does it work within grower economic requirements.
Develop repeatable reporting on pilots, field trials, case studies, and commercialization milestones, with a goal of quarterly reporting by innovation category.
Adapt the automation commercialization platform model - including grower partnerships, case studies, accelerator partnerships, strategic corporate partnerships, and industry events - to segments that offer increased efficiency of chemical input applications or offer alternatives to chemical inputs (pesticides, herbicides, fungicides)
Identify partnership opportunities comparable to the automation model built around Reservoir Farms, John Deere, Plug and Play, case studies, and field-facing commercialization support.
Work with WG Marketing and PR/Comms teams to develop a roadmap for case studies, grower education, startup profiles, and outbound marketing campaigns that raise awareness of solutions that solve real grower problems.
Work with industry partners on events, demo days, grower roundtables, webinars, and field-based programs that support adoption of chemical input alternatives, circular economy, biomanufacturing, packaging alternatives, and other innovation solutions.
Become a WG voice on priority innovation categories at key industry events, representing and advocating for WG member interests and helping the startup community understand grower economics and adoption requirements.
Develop reports for case studies, partnerships, events, and marketing campaigns, with a goal of quarterly reporting on outputs and impact.
Utilize all capabilities to satisfy one mission — to enhance the competitiveness and profitability of our members. Do everything possible to help members succeed by being curious and striving to understand what others are trying to achieve, planning, and executing work helpfully and collaboratively. Be willing to adjust efforts to ensure that work and attitude are helpful to others, be self-accountable, create a positive impact, and be diligent in delivering results.
Maintain internet speed of 40 MB download and 10 MB upload and router with wired Ethernet.
Maintain and service safety equipment (e.g., smoke detector, fire extinguisher, first aid kit).
Maintain a valid California Driver’s License.
Maintain a clean DMV record and the ability to travel to locations throughout the U.S. (mainly California and Arizona) up to 50-60% of the time.
All other duties as assigned.