Executive Officers & Leadership Team
Kevin Hammill
Amit Vasavada , Ph.D.
Keith Pitts
A 28-plus-year agricultural industry veteran, Kevin Helash became CEO of Marrone Bio Innovations in August 2020 after serving as CEO for Agrinos AS, a global-scale biological crop input provider specializing in biofertilizers and biostimulant products, for three years. Prior to joining Agrinos, Helash was a vice president and corporate officer with Agrium (now Nutrien Ltd.), one of the world’s largest agricultural product distributors.
During his 26-year tenure with Agrium, Helash held senior management roles leading global sales, marketing, logistics and supply chain strategies. Helash also served in international leadership positions for Agrium spanning the Americas and Europe where he interfaced directly with growers, retail and wholesale distributors, and investors. As head of the company’s Canadian retail operations, Helash grew the organization to a multi-billion-dollar revenue entity and led the successful acquisition and integration of Viterra’s retail agribusiness to create the largest agricultural retail organization in Canada.
Helash has served on the Board of the International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI) as well as CropLife Canada and received his Bachelor of Science in Agriculture from the University of Manitoba.
Dr. Timothy Johnson currently serves as Vice President of Field Development and Technical Services after having several management roles since joining Marrone Bio Innovations in 2008. A published researcher and lecturer, .Dr. Johnson has 30 years of experience in the development and market support of biopesticides for use in agricultural pest management.
As a senior and contributing author, Dr. Johnson has lectured at national and regional meetings of the Entomological Society of America, Society for Invertebrate Pathology, American Mosquito Association, International Entomological Congress, the First International Conference on Bacillus thuringiensis and the Beltwide Cotton Conferences.
Johnson holds two US patents and his research has been published in the Journal of Economic Entomology, Canadian Entomologist, Florida Entomologist, Applied and Environmental Microbiology, the Journal of Bacteria and Entomophaga. He is a contributing author in C. Gawron-Burke and T. B. Johnson. 1994. Developments of Bacillus thuringiensis-based pesticides for the control of potato insect pests. In Advances in Potato Pest Biology and Management APS Press, and in J. A. Baum, T. B. Johnson and B. C. Carlton. Bacillus thuringiensis. Natural and Recombinant Products. From: Methods in Biotechnology, vol. 5: Biopesticides: Use and Delivery. Humana Press Inc.
Mr. Johnson holds a Ph.D. in Entomology from Purdue University.
Keith Pitts has served in numerous senior legislative, administrative, regulatory and public policy roles for more than two decades, and has been actively involved in shaping domestic and international policies regarding pesticides, organic agriculture, agricultural biotechnology, invasive species, climate change, specialty crops and food safety. He joined MBI in 2008, after working at the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a special assistant to deputy secretary Richard Rominger, and to Secretary Dan Glickman.
Pitts led several key agricultural, environmental and food safety initiatives for the USDA and the Clinton Administration. His career work has focused on issues such as the president’s Initiative to Ensure the Safety of Imported and Domestic Fruits and Vegetables, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Montreal Protocol and phase-out of methyl bromide, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, major reform of U.S. pesticide policy and agricultural biotechnology policy, the WTO and NAFTA, and several U.S. farm bills. He was also the USDA leader on developing and implementing the president’s Executive Order on Invasive Species and the president’s National Invasive Species Management Plan.
Most recently, Pitts was public policy director for the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, a nonpartisan research and policy organization based in Washington, DC, where he led all of the organization’s policy-related activities.
Pitts is on the Research Advisory Council for the Farmland Trust and is also a member of the National Academies of Science Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources (The National Research Council) headquartered in Washington, DC.
Pitts holds a B.A. in chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Dr. Vasavada has 30 years of experience in industrial bioproducts, fermentation R&D and manufacturing, process engineering, and technology transfer. His broad commercial background includes positions with General Atomics, Vical Inc., Diversa Corporation, Monsanto (CP Kelco), and Chiron Corp. Dr. Vasavada is a co-inventor on three patents and is a frequent invited speaker at professional scientific society meetings. He earned his Ph.D. in Applied Microbiology at the University of California, Davis.
Mr. Hammill brings over 25 years of leadership experience and broad commercial success in the crop protection, plant nutrition, animal feed and biotechnology industries.
Most recently, Mr. Hammill was Chief Operating Officer at Pivot Bio, a startup company focused on providing a renewable biological alternative to fertilizer. Prior to Pivot Bio, Hammill was V.P. Ag Operations and Strategy at Valent USA, a division of Sumitomo Chemical, where he oversaw the U.S. Marketing Group, seed treatment business unit and Canadian business operations. Over his 12 years at Valent, Hammill created and directed new growth platforms, commercial alliances, licensing agreements, strategic initiatives and technology adoption that resulted in significant incremental growth and margin to the company.
Before Valent, Mr. Hammill had multiple sales and marketing management positions over the course of 12 years at BASF and American Cyanamid (acquired by BASF in 2000).
Linda Moore joined Marrone Bio Innovations as general counsel in 2014. She has brought a wide range of corporate legal experience, both domestic and international, to the newly created position. Linda has served as General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer for a number of technology companies including Merix Corp., Phoenix Technologies, and Jabil Circuit, in addition to being co-founder and principal of The Moore Group. Her extensive legal background in the areas of intellectual property, securities regulations and compliance, corporate governance, labor relations, and litigation management lends critical support to MBI business operations. Linda’s experience in international tax, labor, and facilities issues through expatriate and extended assignments in Europe, Asia and Latin America is key in helping to manage the company’s continuing overseas expansion.
Linda is generous with lending her legal skills to several organizations and social causes. She has served as an Executive Mentor to Astia (formerly Women’s Technology Cluster), sat on the Advisory Board for Remedy Interactive and Opportunity Works, and has done pro bono work for the Hospice of San Mateo County.
She earned her J.D. at Michigan State University School of Law and has been an adjunct professor at the University of Detroit Mercy and Santa Clara University.
Jim Boyd joined Marrone Bio Innovations in 2014; he is President and Chief Financial Officer. He brings over thirty years of financial management experience spanning a variety of industries and companies ranging from Fortune 100 firms to start-ups and covering all aspects of the financial function including SEC reporting, GAAP compliance, SOX and internal controls, planning and budgeting as well as broad experience in debt, equity and M&A transactions.
His background includes over 12 years as a public company CFO including seven years as the CFO of ESS Technology, a $300 million manufacturer of DVD and image sensor devices, and three years as the CFO of Silicon Storage Technology, a $400 million manufacturer of memory and non-memory chips. Boyd has also been the CFO of several start-ups including Link-A-Media Devices.
Boyd earned a MBA in finance from the University of Wisconsin and a J.D. from Golden Gate University.