Board of Directors

 

Founder and President

Aaron-Micael Beydoun

Beydoun was formerly an agriculture commodities trader with two privately-held commodity trading houses (Louis Dreyfus Commodities and Neumann Kaffee Gruppe) with posts in Shanghai, New York, Hamburg and Bogotá. He was also with a Cayman Islands-based private equity fund developing greenfield plantations in South America. He later led international business with a spin-out from the Los Alamos National Lab (Descartes Labs) where they were the first to successfully commercialize AI-powered geospatial technologies to industry and government and what is considered 1st generation of ag-tech. He is experienced working with stakeholders across the global food and energy system and is passionate about the interconnectedness of food-health-climate and commercializing breakthrough technologies — lab to market. A former mentee of renowned HBS Professor Dr. Ray Goldberg, he’s currently Corporate Development Lead with Pairwise, the leading genome-editing biotech in agriculture and food.

Chairman of the Board of Advisors and Corporate Treasurer

John Power

Power has held executive positions in start-up business operations, mid-size companies and large multinationals. He is President of LSC INTERNATIONAL, Inc., a Chicago based consulting firm specializing in the provision of strategic and business development advice to participants in the global Agri-Food Chain. He has founded a number of companies and is an active Angle Investor with HBS Angels of Chicago. He serves on the boards of SWARM Engineering, Psylotech Inc., and is a Senior Advisor for IntelinAir Inc. He is a Fellow of the Farm Foundation Roundtable, and a member of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers and the American Seed Trade Association. He currently serves on the HBS Alumni Board and on the board of the Harvard Alumni Association. He holds B. Comm and M. Econ. Sc. Degrees from University College, Dublin, Ireland and an MBA from Harvard Business School.


Board Member

Marcus Agnew

Agnew is currently the Chief of Staff to the CEO of UPL, a multinational agri-inputs company headquartered in India. Prior to joining UPL, Marcus spent five years in McKinsey & Company's Sydney office serving a range of agri and and non-agri clients, and a year working with Arysta LifeScience in the US on strategic projects. He is passionate about the intersection of technology and agriculture, and how we can use innovation to help build a more sustainable food system that better serves the needs of consumers, farmers, and the environment. Marcus holds an MBA (Harvard Business School, Class of 2015), an MSc. in Law and Finance (Oxon), a Bachelor of Laws with First Class Honors (UNSW) and a Bachelor of Economics (Sydney).

Board Member

Natalie Jackson

Co-President of the HBS Food, Agriculture & Water Club. Previously in healthcare investment banking at Citigroup and endowment investment management at Stanford University. Through this experience, she realized that there is a massive opportunity at the intersection of food and health, industries that typically seem disconnected. I came to HBS to connect with the broader Harvard graduate community and find ways to create a more resilient, sustainable, and nutritious global food system. She came to HBS to connect with the broader Harvard graduate community to find ways to create a more resilient, sustainable, and nutritious global food system.

Board Member

Felicia Wu

Wu (Harvard AB, SM '98, Applied Mathematics) is the John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of Food Safety, Toxicology, and Risk Assessment at Michigan State University, and a recently named University Distinguished Professor. She works at the nexus of agriculture, food safety, and nutrition; and how they affect food security and global health. Felicia is the President of the international Society for Risk Analysis, and a member of three World Health Organization committees including the Food Based Dietary Guidelines Committee, the Foodborne Disease Burden Epidemiology Reference Group, and the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives.

Board Member

Cinzia Rascazzo

Rascazzo was formerly with J&J, Eli Lilly, Kraft, Goldman Sachs and later decided to become a food entrepreneur focused on improving people's health and driving sustainability through education. She is founder of Stile Mediterraneo Academy, a team of doctors and food experts providing education on a plant-based Mediterranean Diet and is also a direct-to-consumer brand of an extra virgin olive oil. It is produced in a way that does not require intensive farming and deforestation and that is naturally rich in Vitamin E and antioxidants. Razcasso is also the founder of Artisans of Taste, a social venture with the mission of fostering sustainability and tackling climate change by elevating the voices of small and sustainable farmers. Cinzia has an MBA from HBS (class of 2002), an undergraduate degree in Economics from Bocconi University and is based in Italy. Cinzia speaks Italian, English, French and basic Spanish.