Liderazgo

Not too many teenagers can say they couldn’t wait to get to the packing house…except me. My Uncle Walter was a well‑respected tree fruit grower and nurseryman and my first mentor. Every chance I got, I’d ride my bike to his ranch and work in the packing house and in the fields. I knew then I wanted to be a farmer.

After college, I ran a citrus packing company before I had the great good fortune to be hired by Stewart Resnick as COO of his 150 million dollar citrus business at The Wonderful Company. I worked for and learned from Stewart for the next 20 years as president of that business and am proud to be part of the team that grew Wonderful’s citrus operation to just north of a billion dollars.

I’m as excited by the opportunity at Frutura as I was when I was a kid pedaling to my uncle’s ranch. We have the chance to craft an extraordinary business through careful acquisitions. We will make our companies that much stronger by association and set precedents through our execution of the values foundational to Frutura.

I have spent the bulk of my professional career working in agriculture, plant genetics, and social and environmental impact. I am convinced there is a way to provide the market with what it needs when it needs it, while also protecting our planet and treating those who live on it with dignity and respect.

Frutura has the luxury of targeting the market with precision, bringing the optimal companies into our network, and ultimately benefitting consumers and our natural and human environments. At Frutura, market demand drives production. We provide our customers and consumers with healthy, high-quality fruit when they want it; at the same time, we are championing transparency, the environment, and social impact.

I have always been purpose driven and I’m excited about what we are working together to achieve at Frutura. The company marries my commitment to the principles of environment, social impact, and good governance (ESG), with my experience in agriculture. Moving the ESG needle within large-scale agriculture is ambitious, but we have to do it for our planet and its people. Fruit, meet your future.