AGTECH INNOVATION DIRECTOR

Position Summary

The BioSTL AgriFood team seeks an AgTech Innovation Director to play a critical role in driving the growth and impact of St. Louis thriving innovation ecosystem. This position directly supports our purpose of transforming the pathway through which innovation reaches farmers in the Midwestern US.

In this central role, the AgTech Innovation Director will lead and deliver ongoing work to attract innovative, high-growth companies worldwide to Missouri. The BioSTL AgriFood Team creates and nurtures strategic connections with corporations, universities, and our Early Adopter Grower Innovation Community (EAGIC) farmers to convene their collective voice and buying power. This results in relationships with innovators that advance the mission and health of our strategic partners, farmers, and the agricultural communities we serve. We are pursuing candidates with a shared vision that can leverage, build, and lead this high-performing program to the next level. The position will report to Chad Zimmerman, Senior AgriFood Director at BioSTL.

Job Duties and Responsibilities

As a member of the BioSTL AgriFood team, the AgTech Innovation Director will actively participate in the following responsibilities:

• Work collaboratively with BioSTL leadership to manage overall recruitment and assess technologies with high-potential startups
• Collaborate with BioSTL leadership to develop and implement improved strategies and processes to enable higher quality, efficiency, and throughput of innovator assessments
• Engage with BioSTL leadership to fulfill the mission of BioSTL in building a world-class innovation economy
• Deepen relationships with EAGIC farmers, university researchers, contract researchers, and R&D departments at Regen AgriFood Coalition in the Heartland (ReACH) member companies
• Execute the logistics of the ReACH Innovation Testbed pilot projects to validate startup company claims in real-world / field conditions to provide a meaningful new path for innovations to reach farmers
• Grow the scale and impact of the EAGIC network and ReACH Testbed to fully unlock the power of these communities
• Successfully convene local farmer events to discover details of their needs and amplify successful discoveries
• Magnify the impact of the network by highlighting marketing campaigns in partnership with the BioSTL Marketing Team
• Deliver high-quality visits of innovators / delegations to local farmers / corporations for firsthand experience

Expected Outcomes

• Execute additional innovations being consistently piloted and scaled
• Solidify the ReACH and EAGIC testing platforms as a national and globally recognized model for sourcing, validating, and scaling farmer-centric innovation
• Establish qualitative and quantitative metrics to assess and communicate innovator diligence summaries
• Enable the model to be known for trust-based collaboration between farmers, innovators, researchers, corporations, and farming communities
• Increase the awareness by national and international entities of St. Louis as the preferred AgriFood innovation hub
• Continue to enhance trusting relationships and high collaboration with similar innovation research organizations

Required Qualifications

• Bachelors or Masters degree in agriculture, business management, or related field, or equivalent work experience
• 15+ years of professional work experience
• Enthusiasm for innovative and disruptive new technologies
• Open-minded and collaborative to understand different perspectives, cultures, and strengths/weaknesses of yourself and others
• Culture of accountability and excellence (see it, own it, do it) can efficiently adapt to quickly shifting priorities, demands, and timelines
• Willingness to travel as needed, mainly throughout the Midwest

Desired Qualifications

• Experience with field testing protocols and launching new products
• Proven track record in technical evaluations, due diligence, and intellectual property review
• Ability to understand and speak the different languages of corporations, startups, and farmers

Skills

The ideal candidate will be a passionate self-starter with a strong background in agriculture and an interest in entrepreneurship. This individual is willing to take on new challenges in a fast-paced environment, likes to question the status quo, and is a good communicator with both internal and external audiences. They can take a non-biased approach to evaluations and can be persuasive and motivating to elicit cooperation and results. They align with our culture of accountability amid an overall diversity in assignments that demonstrate flexible responsibilities such as managing a long-term process, multitasking multiple priorities simultaneously, or negotiating complex situations. This individual will embrace a lifelong learning mindset; continually asking for feedback and ways to improve.

Compensation

Pay is commensurate with experience and is benchmarked against market rates. The benefits package for full-time employees includes excellent health coverage, generous retirement savings match, tuition assistance, and other benefits to support employees personally and professionally.

Application

Please upload your resume on the BioSTL website under this job posting headline. Confidential inquiries can be submitted to [email protected] with this job posting title in the subject line. For more information, please visit ReACH.Ag, and EAGIC.

BioSTL is committed to creating a diverse, inclusive, and equitable ecosystem. We are committed to seeking individuals of diverse backgrounds and experiences who bring diverse perspectives to this work. This is an equal employment opportunity.

About BioSTL

Since 2001, St. Louis nonprofit BioSTL has laid the foundation for the regions innovation economy with a comprehensive set of transformational programs that advance St. Louis leadership in solving important world challenges in agriculture, medicine, health care, and other technology areas. BioSTL has introduced nationally acclaimed initiatives in startup creation and investment (BioGenerator Ventures), strategic business attraction (GlobalSTL), physical environment (including Cortex and BioGenerator Labs), entrepreneur support, seed and venture capital, a diverse and inclusive workforce, and public policy. Find us online at BioSTL.org