TALAM - Key Persons
Aoife knows how to get things done. She's the operations manager for Talam's R&D efforts, which means she supports the research team in acquiring, equipping, transporting and facilitating what happens in the labs and throughout the company as a whole. She prides herself on resolving what she calls the "How do we do this" firsts that come with an innovative, young company. That means investigating different options and finding a way for Talam to achieve or do something that they haven't done before. For Aoife, it's about helping the team achieve the next milestone, however big or small that might be, because every step counts towards the end goal.
Job Titles:
- Research Manager
- Plant Scientist
"What drives us at Talam is the desire to protect the health of people. The microbes that live in the soil already do the jobs we need them to do. If we learn more about what they're doing and how they're doing it, it can lead to a safer and more sustainable way of producing food while protecting the earth."
As a plant scientist at Talam, Alice is always growing - both literally and figuratively. With a master's degree in plant biotechnology and a PhD in plant developmental genetics, she designs and sets up Talam's spinach, rice and wheat pot trials. She loves the freedom she has to design each experiment so she can see how Talam's products perform on plants. But what she loves the most is working with the team to determine what those results might mean and how they can build on them to help solve challenges in food production and sustainability.
Job Titles:
- Field Development Manager
"Working in plant science gives you a sense of duty to use the knowledge you have amassed over your years of studying to do something worthwhile for the planet and the future of the planet, especially given the challenges we are facing today in terms of climate change. Talam is an opportunity to do that something worthwhile and improve food safety and soil health using the most natural products."
Growing up on a tillage farm in Ireland, Emma Doyle just may have plants woven into her DNA. As a plant scientist at Talam, she takes the natural microbial products that have been evaluated in laboratory experiments and plans the next stage of testing in actual farm fields and beyond on their path to getting into market. Months of preparation and planning goes into those large-scale field trials, but it's all worth it for Emma when she sees her crops in the field. The final payoff is when she sees positive results at harvest because she knows that a natural Talam product is one step closer to market.
"I love the mission of Talam. We are trying to solve critical food and environmental challenges that no one else is addressing. We have a dedicated and passionate team of scientists who believe that we can make a difference when it comes to improving food safety."
"Talam's primary focus is to help make our food, soil and people safer and healthier. It's a big, hairy, audacious goal, but nature is amazing and has a solution to everything. We just need to find it. That's what drives me at Talam - that we are doing something big, and good, for the planet."
Eoin is Talam's chief financial officer. For more than three decades, he's worked in a variety of commercially focused finance roles and for the last 11 years, has worked with early-stage companies and startups. He loves building businesses from the ground up, which is exactly what he's helping do at Talam. Since joining the company in 2021, he's done a little bit of everything including financial oversight, fundraising, corporate governance, IT implementation, human resource management and legal compliance. In a nutshell, Eoin's job is to make sure Talam is operating smoothly and poised for continued growth.
Job Titles:
- Director of Strategy & Business Development
Flor Linares has been immersed in the agri-food space since she was a child, helping in her family's food distribution business in Argentina where her job was to organize invoices in numerical order. After almost 10 years rotating through management consulting at McKinsey, Argentina's national government, and agricultural social enterprise in Sierra Leone, she joined Talam to fully dive into her passion for the food system. In her role, Flor supports fundraising for Talam, engaging with potential investors and partner organizations (industry players, NGOs, government). She helps set the overall direction for the company, its business model and commercial strategies, working closely with CEO John Chrosniak.
"Heavy metal pollution in soils is a pressing issue faced by farmers across the world. It threatens food security as well as both, human and animal health. Talam is using the microbes found within the soil itself to spearhead our innovative research. I'm incredibly proud to be part of the team doing such important work urgently needed to address this problem."
Job Titles:
- Chief Executive Officer
- President
"As a society, we have a lot of issues we're facing that don't have solutions, like heavy metals in food crops. Our talented team at Talam has discovered an incredible amount of information about what microbes in our soil do, so we're using nature to develop viable, useful tools that will help solve those challenges."
John has a deep passion for agriculture because of the critical role it plays in providing safe and nutritious food in a way that can be sustained for generations to come. He notes, "It all starts with the soil. Healthy soil leads to healthy plants, healthy people and a healthy planet."
As president and CEO of Talam, John leads a team of dedicated scientists and professionals working to find solutions to some of the biggest challenges society faces, like reducing heavy metals in our food, reducing fertilizer use, improving crop yield and restoring soil health. He taps into his past leadership experience as chief strategy officer at Corteva, president of DuPont Sustainable Solutions, CEO of the startup Invaio, and board chair positions at CropLife America and United Fresh Produce among others, to help Talam bring these solutions to the market.
John sees the tremendous role Talam can play in helping improve the health of people and our planet. He pushes his team to always ask "What if?" What if we could eliminate heavy metals from our food? What if we could help farmers improve their yields without applying fertilizer? And then they dig in and they find ways to unlock nature - specifically key microbes - to achieve it.
"When I came across Talam, I was excited by its goal to reduce heavy metal pollution in crops using microbes. Heavy metal pollution is a problem at the forefront of food safety and crop production. I am proud to be a part of the groundbreaking work that is being carried out at Talam."
"I strongly believe in Talam's mission to make the world a healthier place to live. People want to take care of the planet and think of new ways to make it more sustainable for the next generation. I think Talam is doing just that."