Learn More About The Digital Ag Opportunity

Jeremy Williams is the Head of Climate LLC and Digital Farming for Bayer Crop Science, where he leads a diverse team that develops digital tools to help unlock the next wave of ag innovations. Jeremy is also a member of the Crop Science Executive Leadership and Commercial Leadership Teams.

Prior to his current role, Jeremy served as SVP, Head of Plant Biotechnology for Bayer Crop Science, where he led a global team to enable a robust plant biotechnology pipeline. Jeremy has over 20 years of diverse biotech and agrochemical R&D experience, and served in several R&D leadership roles at Monsanto including as Head of Chemistry R&D. He began his career as one of the founding scientists at Divergence Inc., a St. Louis-based startup acquired by Monsanto in 2011. 

Jeremy is passionate about Inclusion & Diversity and a proud member of several I&D organizations. He graduated from Washington University with a Ph.D. in Molecular Biophysics and from Swarthmore College with a B.A. in Biochemistry and French.

Jim leads the Finance and Facilities teams as CFO of Climate LLC. Jim has 25 years of diverse global experience across industries such as software, agriculture, and management consulting. Prior to joining Climate LLC, 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.

As Head of HR and People for Climate LLC and Digital Farming Solutions at Bayer Crop Science, Joanna Porter leads a global, diverse team focused on attracting, developing, and retaining the talent and workplace culture needed to enable our digital farming business strategy. 

Joanna joined Monsanto in 2007, and since 2016 served as the Global HR Business Partner for the Bayer Crop Science Plant Breeding organization, responsible for people strategy and a critical contributor to the creation of the organization’s Strategic Alignment and Team of Teams vision and culture transformation. Joanna brings experience from industries, supporting commercial, product supply, IT and strategy teams thru transformation and change.   

Joanna brings a passion for connecting people and ideas, helping teams adapt business needs into solutions, and developing potential. A native Canadian, Joanna is a graduate of the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Management program and earned her Masters in Human Resources from Loyola University in Chicago.

John leads Climate LLC’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.

Nikki leads the Operations organization at Climate LLC. She oversees the Information Technology (IT), Communications, Strategic Innovations & Partnerships and Sustainability functions -- ensuring close connection and collaboration with Bayer Crop Science (BCS) colleagues to advance the business and deliver new value to customers. 

Most recently, Nikki served as Senior Director of Science Enabling, where she aligned and integrated Science and R&D objectives and initiatives across the organization. She has led many talented teams in more than 18 years at Bayer Crop Science -- always taking a cross-functional approach with an emphasis on innovation. 

Nikki received a Juris Doctorate of Law and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering.

Heather Wade serves as VP of Engineering at Climate, where she leads a team of software engineers, computer scientists, and developers building out the infrastructure behind the Climate FieldView platform and Bayer Crop Science digital farming. Heather joined the Climate Engineering organization in 2020; with a passion for data integrity and cleanliness, and a wealth of experience building and maintaining technical teams, her experience is helping to bring Climate teams together in new and collaborative ways.

Prior to joining Climate, Heather gained broad experience across a number of Seattle and San Francisco startups, including as Co-Founder and CEO of data privacy startup Preclusio. Heather has a driven and cooperative leadership style, having led engineering teams as VP and Director of Engineering at both startup and more mature organizations.

Heather’s experience includes collaboration with the San Francisco Bay Area startup accelerator Y Combinator. She holds a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Tennessee Knoxville.

Brandon Rinkenberger is the Chief Customer Officer at Climate LLC leading the Global Customer Experience and Enablement team for Bayer’s Digital Farming Solutions (DFS) unit. He is a member of the DFS Global Leadership team as well as the North American Leadership Team for Bayer’s Crop Science Division.  He and his team lead product marketing and customer acquisition, activation, and support for growers worldwide, ensuring growers have success with digital tools that optimize their farming performance.

Brandon has been a leader in agriculture’s digital transformation over the past ten years. He led North American Sales for Precision Planting before moving into Global Business Development and then International Marketing for Climate LLC. He led the U.S. launch of Climate FieldView and expanded the product into Canada, South America, and Europe. Most recently he was the Director for Row Crop Digital Strategy in Bayer Crop Science where he focused on developing a comprehensive global portfolio of digital concepts.

Brandon’s career started at Caterpillar where he held a variety of sales and marketing positions for regional and global markets. A very rewarding experience was leading sales and marketing for Watershed Foods, a food ingredient start-up. There he developed and launched several successful products enabling Watershed to achieve growth and become a sustainable business.

Brandon holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration-Marketing from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois.  

Brandon is passionate about building successful businesses, enabling teams, and his family!  Brandon lives in the St. Louis area with his wife, Mindy, and four children. He enjoys traveling to warm destinations with Mindy, running with his daughters and golfing with his sons. 

As Chief Science Officer, Tom leads the Science organization at Climate LLC and Digital Farming at Bayer Crop Science, where he drives the company’s research and development efforts in data science, modeling, sensing, and field research. The capabilities developed within the Science organization enable operational insights backed by the integration of vast amounts of real field data into Climate models.

Most recently, as the Senior Director of Science Implementation at Climate LLC, Tom led the testing and application of Climate Science in our global field operations and with our customers, in order to ensure successful execution of Science research. Tom brings to his role more than 14 years of strategic leadership at Bayer in the development and implementation of research and technology deployment that directly benefits farmers.

Tom holds a BS in Agronomy, and a Masters and Ph.D in Entomology from the University of Nebraska.