Leadership
Shane Hand
Building on his Mississippi roots, Shane has spent his entire career in agriculture. He is an honors graduate of Mississippi State University with a Bachelor of Science in Integrated Pest Management, a Master of Science in Entomology and graduate Minors in Weed Science and Statistics. He studied Business Administration and General Management at IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland.
During his 25+ year career in the agriculture industry, he has held a wide range of executive positions. He has served as Director of Marketing at Bayer CropScience, Global Agribusiness Practice Leader at Ernst & Young, and Vice President of Global Marketing and Portfolio Management at Valent BioSciences,
As President and Founding Partner of AgVisement Consulting, he has served clients such as Southern Ag Services, Ag TechInventures, Acadian Plant Health, and Spectrum Technologies. His key responsibilities and achievements are listed below and on his LinkedIn profile.
In each of his current and previous roles, he has successfully created and executed strategies, business and portfolio developments, and commercial deployments in both specialty horticulture and broadacre crop markets across North America and international markets, including South America (Brazil, Argentina, etc), Asia (China, India, etc) and Europe (numerous countries).
Shane’s primary passion areas of agricultural expertise include farming operations, crop protection and seed multinational operations and digital farming innovations. Additional areas of expertise include biologicals / biostimulants, equipment, retail and agtech innovations with a focus on data-enabled decision-making, digitalization and ROI-focused precision farming.
With an impact of over $1 billion throughout his career, he is a dynamic and collaborative leader with a proven aptitude for driving scale and business efficiencies. He is market-driven and customer-centric with a complementary foundation in strategy development and commercial execution. He facilitates enterprise-wide initiatives by building consensus within organizations and has generated significant revenue.
Further, Shane is a growth-focused, results-driven, entrepreneurial leader with proven success in both startup and multinational organizations. His leadership style is rooted in two fundamental principles: character (integrity, humility, trust, honesty) and competence (problem solver, business builder, proven experience, business acumen, demonstrated results).
His visionary passion for excellence resides in his drive to be a highly-influential leader and contributor to the long-term success of innovative agricultural companies, ensuring the productivity and profitability of modern agriculture practices to affordably and sustainably feed, clothe and fuel a growing global population.
● Accountable for P&L and business functions, built high-performing team of 25+ leaders
● Globally led org to unprecedented growth, delivering >$100M (>25% CAGR) growth
● Designed strategy and initiated execution of tactical plans to achieve $1B+ by 2030
● Successfully drove the largest fiscal back-to-back financial growth in history of Valent
● Realigned organization to be market-driven, customer-centric and innovation-focused
● Installed Project Management (PMO) functionality to prioritize and streamline growth
● Launched and scaled core portfolio resulting in 10-fold sales increase ($500M+ in 5yrs)
● Led restructure that propelled Bayer to a #1 marketshare position in specialty crops
● Designed and built xarvio.com (digital farming ecosystem), later acquired by BASF
● Brokered >40 partnerships with entrepreneurial commercial / business collaborators
● Nationally led development activities and technical go-to-market plans for crop inputs
● Successfully developed and launched multiple products in numerous crop segments
● Strategic management and business advisory firm focused on clients in ag value chain
● P&L accountability for creating and delivering client insights to achieve profitability goals
● Acting President and Chief Commercial Officer responsible for scaling the business
● Accountable for P&L (Sales, Marketing, Operations...) and led a team of 35+ leaders
● Developed and implemented strategic plan to achieve >15% scaled growth, globally
● Expanded int’l sales team by 20% to capitalize on growth prospects (EMEA, LatAm)
● Brokered agreements with distributors, resulting in long-term partnerships for growth
● Global Agribusiness Practice Leader engaged as Subject Matter Expert for ag clients
● Closed three multi-million dollar deals with large multinational and distribution clients
● Globally led advisory efforts to create / deliver strategic insights and improvements
● Interim CRO/COO accountable for scaling operations and propelling revenue growth
● Operationally scaled agtech growth initiatives leading to >15% bottomline profitability
● Collaboratively built farmer relationships while scaling service offerings to >1M acres
● Acting Head of Global Marketing and Sales, accountable for accelerating revenues
● Restructured distribution contracts with partners, resulting in >15% topline growth
● Accountable for P&L, sales, marketing, strategy, commercialization, lifecycle mgmt
● Performed all CXO responsibilities for startup incubator and three portfolio startups
● Managed and executed capital raise campaigns securing millions in investor funding
