Senior Director - Innovation

Compensation

$-$ with a rich benefits package that includes profit-sharing.

This position is responsible for advancing a portfolio of high‑potential innovation opportunities that can improve the competitiveness, profitability, and resilience of Western Growers members. This position works directly with the organization’s members, colleagues, agricultural industry, startups, researchers, industry partners, and investors to identify, validate, and scale innovation solutions in priority segments beyond automation. The position works to leverage the WG Innovation team’s automation platform elements to focus on identifying new innovations, evaluating the provider and technology, and providing feedback to WG members on those that are showing promise and/or commercializing successfully.

The key focus areas for this position include chemical crop input alternatives such as biologicals (with a focus on bio‑controls), genetics (with a focus on pathogen and pest resistance), and regenerative agriculture practices. The key requirement for this position is to own the innovation funnel from identification of technical innovation in any of these key areas and then push the identified innovations through an evaluation process with results shared with WG members.

An additional area this role will work with in a similar platform fashion is the circular economy. With this portion of the role, the focus will be to identify innovators in the circular economy that is based largely on woody biomass (often from orchards and vineyards) and food waste streams from food production facilities (including packaged salad and other processing facilities).

The final element to focus on in this segment is the innovation around films, fibers, and other materials with, cost‑parity, utility and scalability as alternatives to current approaches in fresh produce packaging in response to increasing regulatory pressure.

• Master’s degree (MBA, Masters of Science, or equivalent) degree and ten (10) years of direct experience in fresh produce industry agriculture operations, AgTech, biologicals, crop inputs, sustainability, circular economy, biomanufacturing, produce packaging, food systems innovation, or related commercialization roles preferred.
• Proven record of working with growers, shippers, startup companies, researchers, industry partners, or technology providers to evaluate whether innovation solutions are ready for commercialization and scale.
• Strong understanding of specialty crop production economics, grower decision‑making, operational risk, labor constraints, crop protection needs, food safety requirements, and the practical requirements for adopting new technologies in production agriculture.
• Ability to evaluate innovation opportunities across multiple technical categories, including biologicals and bio‑controls, genetics and crop resistance, regenerative agriculture practices, circular economy, biomanufacturing, biomass and food waste streams, plastic packaging alternatives, and other emerging segments.
• Proven record of developing economic frameworks for solution evaluation, including grower ROI, cost reduction, yield protection, risk reduction, sustainability outcomes, labor impact, input reduction, and implementation complexity.
• Ability to develop strategies for deeper integration with startups, growers, commodity groups, input suppliers, processors, packaging companies, research institutions, accelerator partners, corporate partners, and investors.
• Proven ability to develop and manage partner efforts with minimal supervision, including field trials, case studies, events, grower education, startup toolkits, strategic partnerships, pilot programs, and industry‑facing communications.
• High degree of flexibility and autonomy, with the ability to prioritize competing opportunities and produce the best outcomes for WG growers, startups, and innovation partners.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to translate technical innovation topics into practical grower economics and industry adoption pathways.
• Internet access provided by a cable or fiber provider with 40 MB…