Maria Fernanda Reyes is a third generation farmer who comes from Sonora, Mexico (Birth place of green revolution). Her farming lineage is very strong. Her grandad started farming at 13 and became a key innovator in the region known as the granary of Mexico. At 15 she migrated to England to pursue her education. She later became a Food Waste manager at ASDA (WALMART) where she led training for managers from all the UK’s stores at the Center of Excellence on supply chain, loss prevention, and waste optimization.
Maria graduated from University of Kent at Canterbury with a degree in International Business and Marketing Management as well as HE diploma from Christ Church University in Business and French and obtained her Global Masters in Management from the London School of Economics. She studied French at the University of Geneva and took part in UN initiatives at the United Nations HQ working with youth from many countries. Maria is fluent in 5 languages.
Her corporate experience includes managing key customer accounts in UK as well as leading process improvements in US, Brazil and India for Cummins Inc.
In 2009 she returned to her farming roots co-founding a biological- Agtech startup, Bioderpac-Agrinos. She grew the company globally as head of Global Business Development, introducing their technology to Mexico, US, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Europe, China, Malaysia, Nepal and India. She also made significant contributions to investor relations as well as the development of a state of the art R&D in the biological space. Maria also successfully launched a 65 dealer network market in India through Rallis (TATA chemical) working with as many as two million individual farmers seeking to be more sustainable and improve production. Maria is a Global regulatory and sustainability expert working closely with USDA, US Congress and EU to introduce a Biostimulant legislation to help farmers produce more sustainably. Maria was granted a scholarship by Stanford Graduate School of Business- Latino Entrepreneurship as part of the Top 3% Latino Entrepreneurs in the US.
Maria being a serial entrepreneur, uses her passion and skill to launch key organizations to solve problems. Maria launched a non-profit organization (AdoptaHero) to support medical front line heroes as well as indigenous population who lack access to medical care, for which she was awarded National COVID 2020 Superhero award by the WHO and Hispanic Star in Action by Stanford University and We are all Human Foundation. She is also a founding member of Biotrends, an AgriFood company with pre and post-harvest biological solutions. Most recently, Maria co-founded FarmX LLC a global multi-stakeholder platform that aims to solve a global problem locally for key stake holders in the Ag space.
Maria’s personal goal is to democratize access to agricultural technologies to help developing countries become self-sustainable and to empower kids to develop technologies for farmers to thrive, help feed the world sustainably and address the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Pradeep was born in a remote village in Kerala, India. He was instilled with social awareness from early years, which he carried through his college days and into his work place. After graduating from college (Commerce and Accounting), he went on to complete his MBA (Finance). His early career includes sales and marketing roles during which he had the opportunity to launch 3M products in Southern Indian Markets.
He is also credited with starting a not for profit accident rescue consortium of agencies in Chennai (South India) which was recognized nationwide for the operational efficiency and saved thousands of life during his tenure. He was also an active volunteer in YRG Care (Center for Aids research and education), where his activities included pre and post test counselling and patient care.
Pradeep later moved to USA and joined Cummins Inc and currently serves as the Executive Director for Global Business Transformation initiatives. He has held many senior roles in Cummins, spanning operations, engineering, Technology, Supply Chain and Business Leadership roles. Pradeep has a passion for problem solving and continuous self-improvement. He went on to take his second MBA (Strategy) and acquired Supply Chain certification. Pradeep won many accolades in Cummins, including Chairman’s Award for process improvement (6 Sigma), Recognition for establishing a robust Compliance (SOX), Designing and implementing Global Supply Chain strategy, New Product Development and recently Global Business Transformation. Through out his career at Cummins, Pradeep continued to focus on Community involvement and Corporate Responsibility through active leadership in Environment Initiatives and initiatives focusing on people with disabilities.
Outside of work, Pradeep’s real passion is solving the supply chain issues that has plagued the food industry. Pradeep is looking for ways to utilize his technology, strategy and supply chain skills to eliminate food waste. Pradeep is very keep on bringing his very unique skill combination of “Strategy and Execution” and applying his corporate experience to solving problems faced by farmers.
