Pamela Marrone, Ph.D. - Founder and CEO.
Pam Marrone founded MBI in 2006. Before that, Dr. Marrone founded AgraQuest in 1995 and served as its CEO, Chairman and/or President until April 2006. At AgraQuest, she raised more than $50 million in venture capital, launched several natural pest management products (Serenade, Sonata, Serenade Garden an others) that are growing rapidly and developed a deep pipeline of other product candidates. She received the Presidential Green Chemistry Award for small business in 2003 and Red Herring magazine’s Top 100 private Company Award and the World Technology Award in 2004. Before AgraQuest, she was founding president and business unit head for Entotech, Inc. (1990-1995) in Davis (CA), a successful biopesticide subsidiary of Denmark-based Novo Nordisk (sold to Abbott in 1995). At Monsanto (1983-1990), she led the Insect Biology group, which was involved in pioneering projects in transgenic crops, natural products, and microbial pesticides. She has been featured in the press and on radio many times – the Wall Street Journal (front page, Nov 2005), National Public Radio, LA Times, Fortune, USA Today, Entrepreneur, Chemical & Engineering News, Farm Chemicals and others. She is an alumna of CORO Foundation's intensive "Women in Leadership" program.
She is on the Steering Committee for IPM Voice, on the Board of the Association of Applied IPM Ecologists (President in 2009-10) and the Board of the Organic Farming Research Foundation (currently Treasurer). From 1999-2007, she served on the Board of Sutter Health's Sacramento-Sierra Region, one of Sacramento's largest private employers and from 1994-2007 on the Sutter Davis Hospital Foundation Board. She is cofounder and Board member of UC Davis CONNECT and DATA (Davis Area Technology Association). She is founding Chair and currently a Board member of the Biopesticide Industry Alliance (BPIA), a trade association of >50 biopesticide companies and consultants. She also is on the University of California President's Board of Science and Innovation, and the UC Davis College of Ag & Environmental Sciences Dean's Advisory Council. She also served on the UC Davis Graduate School of Management Dean's Advisory Council, on Cornell University's President's Council and on the Cornell's College of Ag and Life Sciences Dean’s Advisory Council. The City of Davis awarded her the first Business and Economic Development Award for job creation and her contributions to the local economy, community and industry.
She was the Sacramento Chamber's 2001 Businesswoman of the Year and Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences 2001 Distinguished Alumni Award Recipient and a 2003 recipient of the UC Davis’ College of Agriculture and Natural Resources Alumni Award of Distinction. Her peers elected her as a Fellow of AAAS (American Assoc. for the Advancement of Science). In May 2006, Pam was named a northern California finalist for Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year award. She has a B.S. in entomology with Honors and Distinction from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in entomology from North Carolina State University.