The team —
Mike Straight Chief Executive Officer
Mike, the original creator of the FarmPod, started working with hydroponics 16 years ago. During that time, Mike also raised and maintained an extensive variety of both freshwater and saltwater fish. It was the marrying of the two that got Mike interested in the aquaponics movement. He realized the many advantages that this technology could bring and wanted people to be able to enjoy the benefits of aquaponics without needing any technical expertise. Mike wanted to create a new relationship with food - one that would provide enough food to make a real difference in people’s lives - and so, the idea of FarmPod was born.
Beecher Cotton Chief Engineering Officer
Beecher joins FarmPod with extensive crafting knowledge and a passion to bring innovative ideas into reality. His art spans multiple mediums from shooting and editing feature length narrative films, sculpture, furniture and "progressive” carpentry. As a commercial sculptor, Beecher has worked on multiple projects as strange as 7’ car mounted ice cream cones, to building props for tv shows including WGBH's "Design Squad" and “Fetch”. Beecher’s work in media as a director of photography includes multiple projects with the DIY network as well as HGTV. The projects he worked on placed their emphasis not only on the newest building techniques with the Smart Home Jacksonville FL, design trends, with Dream Homes in Stow VT and Kaiwah SC, and salvage, with Joanne Palmisano's "Salvage Secrets” as well as DIYs blog cabin 2012 for which he received a telly award. Beecher’s interest in tiny/efficient living came while Living in Amsterdam in the late 90’s when he saw shipping containers being used for building for the first time. The next year Beecher prefabbed a 12x20 cabin, disassembled and packed it into a U-Haul. With the help of friends it was installed it onto a southeast facing ledge over 1/2 mile into the woods of Maine. Beecher's excitement to build a product that can revolutionize food production coupled with his and high level of fabrication experience makes him a perfect fit to the FarmPod team.
Piper King
Chief Financial Officer
Piper has been involved in the creation and management of several successful businesses over the past 30 years in addition to running her own bookkeeping service. She moved to Santa Fe, NM in 1988 at which time she became interested in the necessity of protecting our food sources from preservatives, additives and irradiation which has become our ‘normal’ food production paradigm in the US. Piper met Mike while working as CFO of Southwest Acupuncture College from which she retired at the end of 2014. After a year of touring the country in her motor coach, she came out of retirement to add her expertise to the FarmPod team in creating its vision of the future of farming.
Alexandria White
Executive Coordinator & Marketing
Director
Alexandria brings a life long passion for the environment and sustainable business strategies to the FarmPod team. Surrounded by national forests and the Great Lakes, she grew up with a profound connection and appreciation for the natural world. From her work on the Great Barrier Reef to a Peace Corps collaboration with the FAO in the Caribbean, her dedication to sustainability continuously grows stronger, but it doesn’t stop at ground level! After sailing away from the St.Croix HQ, Alex now manages all aspects of our marketing and administration from New Zealand, as she simultaneously pursues post-graduate studies.
Lawrence Kupfer Board of Directors
Lawrence Kupfer brings nearly three decades of corporate planning and management experience. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame as well as an MBA from Colombia Business School. Lawrence worked in Corporate Planning and Controls, Refining Financial Controls and as Manager for Economics and Planning for Hess Corporation, eventually taking on a lead role in the creation of the HOVENSA Joint Venture and ultimately assuming the position of President & Chief Operating Officer. He was also key in the implementation of the fiber optic network project in the VI as President and Chief Executive Officer of viNGN.
Anthony Abbate Board of Directors
Anthony first became interested in holistic life styles and organic farming in 1971. He managed natural food co-ops on the East Coast and worked in conjunction with The New England Federation of Co-ops to bring natural foods from around the country to all the co-ops throughout New England. In 1981 he became interested in Natural medicine and moved to Santa Fe to study acupuncture & Oriental medicine. After graduating and practicing for 3 years he purchased Southwest Acupuncture College and along with his wife Skya developed and grew the small school into a three-campus college, graduating over a thousand practitioners and treating many thousands of patients in the college’s low cost clinics. They sold the school in 2012 and have continued managing the colleges. Anthony sees FarmPod as the future of farming. With its minimal to possibly positive impact on the environment, its ability to grow produce significantly faster than traditional farming in a considerably smaller footprint that can be housed in places where no farm could ever exist, FarmPod offers this with minimal time, labor and expense. Fresh healthy food (and fish) can be more accessible to everyone, especially the needy. He sees this as a major step forward in reducing and possibly even ending hunger in the world.
Shawn Samuel
Chief Technology Officer
Shawn has spent over 20 years building high performance teams and software in spaces involving complex business and technical problems. He has served as the CTO at firms such as LiquidityBook, Skillz (NYSE: SKLZ), and Contact Networks (acquired by Thomson Reuters). Previously, he spent time in senior technology roles at Art Technology Group, i2 Technologies and Actuality Systems. He holds two U.S. patents. Shawn attended Harvard University, graduating Magna Cum Laude.