Leadership

Dwight Anderson

Dwight Anderson launched Ospraie Management, LLC (“Ospraie”), in 1999 in partnership with Tudor Investment Corporation before establishing Ospraie as an independent firm in 2004. Ospraie is an asset management firm that actively invests in commodity markets and basic industries worldwide. Prior to joining Tudor, Mr. Anderson was Managing Director at Tiger Management in charge of the Basic Industries and Commodities Group.

Mr. Anderson has managed multiple investments in the agricultural space, including Teays River Investments, one of the largest U.S. farmland management companies and Gavilon, a provider of agricultural products and services. He previously served as a Director of Adecoagro, one of the largest South American agro-industrial companies in which Ospraie was an early-stage investor and assisted Adecoagro through its initial public offering (“IPO”). Mr. Anderson also previously served as a Director of Gavilon, the commodity trading and merchandising arm of ConAgra Food Inc., which was acquired by Ospraie in 2008.

Mr. Anderson serves on the investment committee of Pandion Mine Finance, LP (“Pandion”), an investment manager focused on the metals and mining industry, and on the Board of Directors of Concord Resources Limited (“Concord”), a global metals merchant business, and Virtus Precision Tube LLC, a copper and aluminum tube fabrication business.

Carl Casale

Carl Casale is a non-executive Director, Independent Director, and Member of the Audit Committee and Independent Directors at Syngenta.

Mr. Casale spent twenty-six years working for Monsanto Company, starting as a sales representative in 1984 and after several sales, marketing, business development, and business leadership roles concluded his tenure as Chief Financial Officer. In 2011, he left Monsanto to become CEO of CHS, Inc., which is the largest farmer-owned cooperative in the United States.

Thomas Wiltrout

Tom Wiltrout has spent his entire career in the agriculture industry spending 35 years at Dow AgroSciences, where he served as a strategic leader developing the global seeds business. Currently, he serves on several Board of Directors, including Ag Alumni Seeds, Innovative Seeds Solutions, LLC, and Remington Holding, LLC.

Mr. Wiltrout was a member of the American Seed Trade Association’s Board of Directors and also served on the Board of Directors of Agri Institute, Indiana’s premier agricultural leadership program.

Bob Woods

Bob Woods has more than 50 years of experience in agribusiness and agriculture products. He serves as Chairman of the Board of Marrone Bio Innovations. Since 2012, Mr. Woods has served as Chairman and CEO of Targeted Growth Inc., a biotechnology firm with leading-edge gene technologies that significantly improve yield in agronomic crops. Prior to that, he served as CEO of Athena Biotechnologies, Inc., Non-Executive Chairman of Syngenta Corporation US, Group President for Zeneca Ag Products, and CEO of Garst Seed Company.

Jason Mraz

Jason Mraz is the Co-founder and President of Ospraie Management. Since 2010, Mr. Mraz has been focused on Ospraie’s business development and private investments. He organized and lead the development of the Ospraie Ag-Science team and Platform with the catalytic investments in Beeflow in late 2017 and Marrone Bio in early 2018.

From 1999 to 2009, he ran all trading activities for Ospraie. In addition, Mr. Mraz was the Co-Portfolio Manager for Ospraie Real Return, and Ospraie Real Return Enhanced Funds actively managed long-only commodity index funds with $1.5bb AUM.

Mr. Mraz’s career has been focused on the financial markets for over 30 years since he joined JPMorgan in 1989. He began his career trading foreign bonds and currencies and spent his last four years at the bank as a long bond sector trader on the U.S Treasury desk. In the summer of 1999, Mr. Mraz joined Dwight Anderson to form Ospraie in partnership with Tudor Investment Corporation.

He currently represents Ospraie Ag-Science on the Board of Directors of Beeflow and IGS-Intelligent Growth Solutions.

Scott Baglio

Scott Baglio is the General Counsel and Chief Operating Officer at Ospraie Management.  Mr. Baglio has worked with Ospraie for many years, both directly and as the Managing Partner of ParkRiver Fund Solutions, a spinout of Ospraie’s middle and back office which was established to provide non-investment infrastructure to a platform of asset managers (hedge, private equity, venture, and real estate funds).

In that role Mr. Baglio oversaw the day-to-day activities of the platform and advised on numerous venture capital and private equity transactions, including on behalf of OAS.  Previously, Mr. Baglio worked as a Senior Attorney covering Alternative Investments in Morgan Stanley’s Global Wealth Management Group. He also held positions in the Investment Management Group of Schulte Roth & Zabel and the Private Equity Group of Weil, Gotshal & Manges. Mr. Baglio holds a JD from the Fordham University School of Law and a BA from Boston College.

Pamela G. Marrone, PhD

Dr. Marrone is the Senior Scientific Advisor to Ospraie. She has spent her 30+ year career focused on biological products for pest management and plant health. In August 2020, Dr. Marrone retired as CEO of Marrone Bio Innovations (NASDAQ: MBII), a company she started in 2006 to discover and develop bio-based products for pest management and plant health which was listed on NASDAQ in 2013. She remains active on the Board of Directors of the company. Prior to establishing MBI, Dr. Marrone founded AgraQuest in 1995, where she served as its CEO, Chairman and President until 2006. Before AgraQuest, she was founding president of Entotech, Inc. (1990-1995), a biopesticide subsidiary of Novo Nordisk. Dr. Marrone started her career in biologicals by leading the Insect Biology group at Monsanto (1983-1990), which was involved in pioneering projects based on natural products and plant biotechnology.

Dr. Marrone holds several hundred patents and is a well-recognized, distinguished leader in the biologicals industry. She is the founder of the Bioproducts Industry Alliance, a trade group which has grown to more than 150 companies. Through her Chestnut Bio Advisors and her association with Global BioAg Linkages and Primary BioAg Innovations, she advises several food and agtech companies, five founded and led by women, currently serves on the UC Davis Ag & Environmental Sciences Dean’s Advisory Council, and was an alumni-elected Trustee of Cornell University (2016-20). She is on the Executive Committee and is Treasurer of the Association for Women in Science and is a board member of the Foundation for Food and Ag Research. 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.

Yogesh Mago

Yogesh Mago has over 15 years of experience in fundamental, bottom-up investing across a variety of industries globally, including agriculture, travel, consumer, transportation, industrials, and real estate. Previously, Mr. Mago worked as a Senior Investment Analyst at Ospraie and Merchants’ Gate Capital L.P. Mr. Mago is the President and Co-Founder of Operation Water, a nonprofit organization that aims to deliver sustainable access to clean water in impoverished countries through the development of scalable infrastructure projects. He is also on the Advisory Board of Girl Rising, the nonprofit organization behind the worldwide social action campaign for girls’ education and empowerment.

Nathan Ebeling

Nathan Ebeling is Head of Research and Trading and actively focuses on business development at Ospraie. Mr. Ebeling was the Co-Portfolio Manager of Ospraie Real Return, and Ospraie Real Return Enhanced Funds actively managed long-only commodity index funds with $1.5bb AUM In 2015, he led Ospraie’s formation of Pandion and serves on the investment committee and Board of Directors.

Partnering with two other firms, Mr. Ebeling’s co-led Ospraie’s investment in Five Rivers, where he currently serves as head of the compensation committee.

Mr. Ebeling also serves on the Board of Directors of Virtus Precision Tube LLC and Shay Capital Holdings, LLC. Prior to joining Ospraie in 2005, Mr. Ebeling was a Vice President in the J. Aron Commodities Group at Goldman Sachs. Mr. Ebeling was first a Field Artillery Officer and was later promoted to Captain while stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington from 1996 to 2000.

Christopher Papouras

Chris Papouras currently serves as a private investor and advisor. Mr Papouras joined the OAS team as a strategic advisor and our selected representative to Freight Farm’s Board of directors. He has a special focused project on Manufacturing Best-Practices in the CEA segment. Prior to that, he was President of Nabors Drilling Solutions, a newly formed technology provider in oil and gas, and President of Canrig Drilling Technology, Ltd., a Nabors subsidiary. Nabors Drilling Solutions was created to automate and disrupt the well construction process with the drilling rig as the platform for automation. Mr. Papouras holds several patents in drilling technology and automation.

Mr. Papouras received a B.S.E degree in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University in 1989. Mr. Papouras graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi. Following Princeton, he attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and simultaneously received his M.Sc. in Management and M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering in 1991 (Leaders for Manufacturing Fellow).

Mr. Papouras serves on the Board of Directors of SEACOR Holdings, Inc., and is a member of the Audit and Compensation Committees. SEACOR is a publicly traded, diversified holding company with interests in domestic and international transportation and logistics and risk management consultancy. In addition, Mr. Papouras serves as an advisor to Tennor Holdings, BV, a global investment holding company that invests in private and public companies and serves on the Advisory Board of Avangard Innovative. Avangard is a premier waste and recycling optimization company. In addition, Mr. Papouras served on the Board of Directors of ERA Group, Inc., and served as Chairman of the Audit Committee, and as a member of the Compensation Committee. Era Group is a publicly traded company that operates helicopter services throughout the world. In addition, Mr. Papouras has served on multiple boards for startup technologies in the Oil & Gas industry.

Mr. Papouras resides in Houston, Texas. He is active in YPO (Young President’s Organization), and local mentoring programs, both as a mentor and mentor recruiter. Mr. Papouras serves as the Board Member (former Board Chair) of the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Houston, and is a Board Trustee of KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) Houston Public Schools.

Lee Vetsch

Lee Vetsch is one of the team’s research analysts. Prior to joining the OAS team, Lee worked as an analyst for IAM Advisors where he formulated target sectors within the Agtech space to improve the firm’s deal sourcing, and he also led all valuation work for the firm. Before his time at IAM Advisors, Mr. Vetsch worked at SWIB where he contributed to sector research reports, company valuations, and due diligence memos in the industrial space.

Mr. Vetsch is a graduate of North Dakota State University where he graduated magna cum laude in 2019 with a degree in Finance and Economics. While at NDSU, Mr. Vetsch worked as a research assistant in the finance department where he created automated risk management models, optimization portfolios, and statistical tests on public agriculture companies for contribution in academic literature and agriculture consulting.

Zach Morse

Zach Morse is an analyst at Ospraie Management and focuses on business diligence and business development for OAS. At Ospraie Management, Mr. Morse has helped lead the fundamental analysis of natural gas, crude oil, refined products, and other energy markets. In addition, Mr. Morse has executed market and company due diligence for private equity opportunities, including the acquisition of Fluid Quip Technologies with GPRE, a potential equity investment in a distressed European alloy manufacturer, and a potential natural gas storage asset purchase.

Prior to Ospraie Management, Mr. Morse was an analyst in the Recapitalization and Advisory Services Group at Sandler O’Neill where he advised companies, creditors, and financial sponsors across a variety of industries on restructurings, recapitalizations, and M&A. In addition, Mr. Morse was a Research Associate at Archstone Partners, an institutional fund of hedge funds with more than $4B under management. He was the primary coverage analyst for hedge fund investments totaling more than $800MM. Mr. Morse has a bachelor’s degree in Geosciences from Princeton University, where he graduated cum laude in 2010.

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