Michael K. Stern, PhD

  • Michael K. Stern, PhD

    Chief Executive Officer

    Mike leads the commercial implementation of The Climate Corporation's systems and solutions, as well as enhanced global coordination, growth and operational efficiencies across the company. He most recently led Monsanto's Row Crop Business in the Americas and has served in leadership roles for a variety of Monsanto's businesses, including: Vice President, U.S. Row Crops; CEO of Renessen LLC, a biotechnology joint venture with Cargill; and Director of Technology, Agricultural Productivity. Mike has a B.S. degree in Chemistry from Denison University, a M.S. degree in Chemistry from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Princeton University. He is the author and inventor of more than 50 scientific publications and U.S. patents related to agricultural technology.

  • Jim Kennelly

    Chief Financial Officer

    Jim leads the Finance and Facilities teams as CFO of The Climate Corporation. Jim has 25 years of diverse global experience across industries such as software, agriculture, and management consulting. Prior to joining The Climate Corporation, Jim was Managing Director and CFO of Bayer Thailand / Myanmar based in Bangkok leading the finance and administrative functions supporting Bayer’s local Consumer Health, Crop Science and Pharmaceutical divisions. Previously, Jim was Head of Business Planning & Administration for Bayer Crop Science Australia in Melbourne and also worked in consulting / finance / operational roles in Bayer as well as at companies such as Tenzing Consulting, Ariba, FreeMarkets and Avery Dennison. Jim earned an M.B.A. in Finance and B.A. in Accounting from Cleveland State University and is a CPA.

  • Brian Lutz

    Chief Science Officer

    Brian leads the Science organization at The Climate Corporation (Climate). As the Chief Science Officer Brian is aligning and extending advances in plant science and data science to revolutionize the farm and deliver value to growers through digital tools. Prior to his role as Chief Science Officer, Brian led the Climate Crop Modeling team, setting research strategy and priorities for leveraging Climate’s industry-leading digital agriculture data to unlock new insights for improving farm productivity. Previously, Brian was a professor at Kent State University, where he led a nationally recognized research program focused on environmental impacts associated with energy production, including coal mining and oil and gas extraction. He has worked extensively at the interface between science and policy, producing research used in litigation, federal rulemaking, and state legislation. He received his B.S. in biology from The College of Wooster and Doctor of Philosophy in biogeochemistry from Duke University.

  • Daniel McCaffrey

    Vice President, Data And Analytics

    Dan leads the Data and Analytics organization at The Climate Corporation, where he is focused on building an analytics platform to generate product insights that help deliver the best agriculture data products and user experience. Dan has 25 years of experience in Silicon Valley in analytics and engineering in general for large scale systems. Prior roles include Vice President Data and Analytics at Teespring.com, CTO at Reputation.com and a General Manager at Zynga for 5 years leading the Analytics and Platform engineering teams. He also spent a little over 16 years in the Biotech space in laboratory research and later bioinformatics engineering. He holds a B.S. in biochemistry from Vassar College and a Master's degree in computer information systems from Golden Gate University.

  • Avery Moon

    Vice President, Engineering

    Avery leads The Climate Corporation's Engineering team. He has 20 years of leadership and technical experience in Silicon Valley, with a focus in transformative and hypergrowth companies. Prior to The Climate Corporation, Avery was VP of Engineering and Research at Wealthfront where he led the Engineering, Research, and Data teams. Previously, he was Senior Director of Engineering at LinkedIn where he led Growth, Consumer, and related infrastructure groups from early days to post-IPO. Earlier in Avery’s career, he held numerous senior technical and architecture roles with RSA and two enterprise venture-backed startups. He earned summa cum laude B.S. in Applied and Industrial / Computational Mathematics, B.A. in Economics, and Entrepreneurship from the Eller College of Management at University of Arizona.

  • John Raines

    Senior Vice President, Global Commercial and Marketing

    John Raines leads the global commercial sales and operations functions for The Climate Corporation's suite of software and enabling hardware offerings. Previously, John was the U.S. Customer Advocacy Lead, championing the development of Monsanto's farmer advocacy campaigns and ag youth outreach. John also was Business Affairs Lead in Corporate Affairs, served as General Manager for Monsanto's Australia, New Zealand, and Philippines business units, and served as Vice President of Marketing for Monsanto's U.S. ag portfolio. Early in John's career, he held multiple sales and management roles, including serving as the U.S. Cotton Marketing Manager, launching Monsanto's first cotton biotechnology products. John has a B.S. in Agricultural Systems Management and Marketing from the University of Missouri – Columbia.

  • Vilas Rao

    Vice President, Strategy

    Vilas joined The Climate Corporation in 2015 and leads Climate’s strategy and business development efforts. Prior to joining The Climate Corporation, Vilas worked at McKinsey & Company, where he led strategy development engagements for Fortune 100 food & agriculture companies and government agencies worldwide. Vilas has an B.A. in Economics from Stanford University and a Masters in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School.

  • Larisa Serbina

    Chief of Staff

    As Chief of Staff, Larisa drives the leadership team’s productivity, organizational alignment and operational excellence. Prior to joining Climate, Larisa led strategic shifts at E. & J. Gallo Winery through partnerships and acquisitions where her team successfully valued, closed and integrated the largest deals in company history. Before entering the private sector Larisa was an Economist with the Department of Interior, focusing on policy decisions in areas of public data and natural resources. Larisa holds a B.S. from University of Michigan in Education and Mathematics and a Masters of Science in Economics from Colorado State University.

  • Matt Shaw

    Chief People Officer

    Matt joined The Climate Corporation in December of 2014 and leads the People Operations team. Prior to joining Climate Matt spent 16 years at Microsoft in a variety of HR roles across several Microsoft businesses and HR centers of excellence. Matt has a B.A in International Relations from Colgate University in New York.

  • Ranjeeta Singh

    Chief Product Officer

    Ranjeeta Singh leads the global product organization at The Climate Corporation driving strategy for agriculture’s leading digital farming platform. Prior to joining Climate, Ranjeeta served as VP and GM of Data Science & Artificial Intelligence (AI) at Teradata after more than 17 years at Intel. Ranjeeta holds a bachelor’s in Computer Science and Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology, India, a master’s in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York and a MBA from Santa Clara University.

  • Kristine Swan

    IT Business Partner

    Kristine leads The Climate Corporation’s digital-based customer and business strategy, leveraging new technologies to help deliver on the future vision of the company, and delivered efficiencies through enterprise capabilities. Kristine has held several leadership roles during more than 20 years within the legacy Monsanto IT organization, driving customer centricity through digital capabilities and  accelerating the use of data and analytics to drive decision making. Passionate about community development and a champion of inclusion and diversity, Kristine is actively involved in several community and professional organizations, with leadership roles in various United Way campaigns and having served as executive sponsor of Monsanto’s Women in IT organization. Kristine received her Master’s Degree in Business Administration (MBA) from Washington University in St. Louis and a Bachelor’s Degree specializing in Information Systems and International Business from Fontbonne University.

  • John Winski

    Vice President, Law, Patents & Compliance

    John leads The Climate Corporation’s legal team. Before joining Climate in 2018, John served as the North American commercial law lead for the legacy Monsanto business acquired by Bayer. Prior to that role, he spent nine years in Asia, serving as the company’s law lead for Asia and Africa. Prior to joining Monsanto in 2003, John spent 12 years in Washington, D.C., where he served as domestic policy advisor to Vice President Al Gore, and held several senior positions in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He also worked for U.S. Senators Patrick Leahy, Mark Dayton, and John McCain, served as counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, and worked closely with the Senate Agriculture Committee during his time in Washington. John received his Bachelor of Arts and Juris Doctorate degrees from the University of Arizona and an LLM in International and Comparative Law from Georgetown University.