Verdesian Life Sciences CEO and leadership

Mr. Avery is a global, transformative CEO with a background of leadership, operations, reengineering, and financial management as a CFO in a broad diversity of industries and issues. A business value creator, change management leader and business strategist, he has created operational empowerment for regions and functions leading to consistently-strong results. He has Board and C- Level executive experience.Currently the CEO of Verdesian Life Sciences. Mr. Avery has transformed all areas of the business, resulting in significantly improved working capital and profitability. He has established a new strategic direction that has led to enhanced operational excellence, a customer-centric view point, improved pipeline commercialization and increased productivity.Earlier, Mr. Avery served as VP, Global Lead, of Monsanto's Vegetable business, transforming the strategic direction and delivering consistent year on year financial and operational improvement.As VP, Global Business Operations, he drove Monsanto’s critical business process redesign efforts across all geographies, divisions and many functions, realizing $950M in cumulative savings.Before, Mr. Avery served as VP and CFO for Delta & Pine Land Company, overseeing accounting, finance, tax, treasury, insurance, HR and safety, and participated in the Company’s sale to Monsanto for a premium of current market price. Earlier, he was VP/Controller for Eagle Materials.A Partner with Arthur Andersen during 1990 to 2002, Mr. Avery served public and large private companies in auditing/consulting.He has a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Accounting from Mississippi State University.

Senior executive with excellent record of success in leading complex global operations and developing high performing organizations that deliver outstanding results. Over 29 years of agricultural and food industry experience in product sectors of internet technology startup, large scale crop protection chemical manufacturing, row crops seed production, vegetable seed production, injectable pharmaceutical, artificial sweetener and animal agriculture.