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Talking Biotech is a weekly podcast that uncovers the stories, ideas and research of people at the frontier of biology and engineering.
Each episode explores how science and technology will transform agriculture, protect the environment, and feed 10 billion people by 2050.
Interviews are led by Dr. Kevin Folta, a professor of molecular biology and genomics.
Kevin Folta (00:00)
I gotta get a little taller. Okay. All right. I'll set. how do you how do I say your name? Is it Bridget or Brigitte?
Brigitte Weston (00:07)
well my name is my parents are German, so they called me Bregitte, but since I grew up in Canada and nobody could pronounce Brigitte, I'm totally agnostic. It could be Brigetta, Brigitte, Brigitte.
Kevin Folta (00:20)
But but what would
you prefer? I can do Brigetta. Yeah, that's easy, German. All
Brigitte Weston (00:23)
Well, sure.
Kevin Folta (00:25)
right, and you're the director of product development at Gates Ag One. Okay. Where are you located?
Brigitte Weston (00:32)
I'm currently I'm I'm a remote employee, but our head office is in Saint Louis, Missouri. I'm actually located in New Hampshire.
Kevin Folta (00:40)
nice Which city?
Brigitte Weston (00:43)
a place called well Bartlett, but it's close to North Conway. So very
Kevin Folta (00:47)
no idea. Yeah I I
Brigitte Weston (00:48)
close to the White Mountains.
Kevin Folta (00:51)
I've been up in Dover a bunch.
Brigitte Weston (00:52)
Okay,
yeah.
Kevin Folta (00:55)
Here, let me just put this here.
Brigitte Weston (00:56)
Nice
part of the country here.
Kevin Folta (01:05)
Could you say your name again, Brighetta?
Brigitte Weston (01:07)
Sure, Brigitta?
Kevin Folta (01:08)
Brighetta? Okay. Got it. All right. If you guys are ever looking for more remote employees, call me. This is right. This is right up my alley. You know, I I I love this kind of mission. And I've been I've been at the university here for 24 years, really frustrated with the funding situation and you know, just federal grants and stuff. I can't do research anymore and
I I did get to visit Uganda and do some work there back in twenty seventeen and just fell in love with the idea. being an extension with small farmers there was great. And I I just I I wanted a career change back then. I thought, God, I could do this, you know, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Brigitte Weston (01:50)
wonderful. Well, yeah. You should come visit us sometime.
Kevin Folta (01:55)
I should. All right. Well, let's let's dive in. Here we go. And I got this going. Let me make sure I've got timer.
Click in, yep, good. Here we go. Yeah.
Sorry.
Brigitte Weston (02:09)
No, you're all good.
Kevin Folta (02:11)
Hi everybody and welcome to this week's Talking Biotech Podcast. Now while cutting edge biotech can take record excuse me, I'm getting a frog in my throat.
I'll I'll get it this time. Hi, everybody, and welcome to this week's Talking Biotech Podcast. Now, while cutting edge biotech can take decades to reach growers, Gates Ag One operates in an agricultural innovation accelerator. Their mission is to speed up the translation of potential crop technologies to directly accessible resilient seeds for smallholder farmers across South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
And
they're seeing so many challenges with respect to climate change, introduction of new pests and pathogens, and many of the world's staple crops are continually threatened. Their mission is to bring innovation to these places. And I'm speaking with Brigitte Weston. She's the director of product development at GatesAg One. So welcome to the podcast.
Brigitte Weston (03:09)
Thanks so much, Kevin. Really good to be here.
Kevin Folta (03:11)
Yeah, it's really nice to have you on. I've I don't know that I've ever had anybody on from a Gates affiliate before. And I've always had the scientists on. So scientists who've been working in Cassava or scientists who've been working with other issues in sub-Saharan Africa. And so this is really, really kind of cool to kind of connect with the mothership here. But before getting into the science and scale of Gates Agon, can you tell me a little bit more about your journey and kind of the spark that
brought you into agricultural innovation in the first place.
Brigitte Weston (03:44)
Yeah, sh sure. well, I started off doing a master's in Ottawa. I'm Canadian, in virology. And I think I just got tired of you know, isolating viral isolates on a centrifuge in a basement lab. And we had a greenhouse just above the lab. And I love to spend my time in the greenhouse, even volunteering to water plants, so
That was sort of the first sign that I really was interested in plants, probably more than viruses. And then when I was doing my PhD on plant molecular biology and plant breeding, I realized that spending time out in the field with the plant breeders was a lot more exciting for me than spending time in the lab cloning and doing agribacterium transformations, etc. So I slowly migrated to product development.
where we were taking the innovations from the lab to the field. And so that's sort of the space that I've been working in for the last 30 years.
Kevin Folta (04:48)
That's very good. If you're more comfortable, I could actually do the interview in Canadian. I speak Canadian fluently. I could tell you,
Brigitte Weston (04:54)
you do? Let's go.
Kevin Folta (04:55)
I could tell you all about the pros the process. Yeah, no, that's that you know always I always appreciated our neighbors to the north and been there quite a bit and a little bit disappointed in the current state of affairs, but there we are. But if if we were so I'm a plant molecular biologist by training, do genomics work, that kind of thing.
And we've been doing a lot of work with everything we can do to find support through NSF, USDA, all those kinds of things. So if if I sat down next to you in an airplane, on a flight and you know, and and needed to know what Gates Ag one did, could you give me kind of the back of the envelope, you know, how how how they're good for scientists or if if I or how you would talk to someone in the general public?
Brigitte Weston (05:42)
Sure, yeah. Well, Gates Ag One, or our full name is Gates Agricultural Innovations, it was set up as an affiliate of the Gates Foundation, as a nonprofit, to act as an accelerator to accelerate discovery innovations in crop sciences for specifically smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
We were set up sort of to address what we call sometimes the missing middle. And so we want to engage sort of once the science has shown a certain proof of concept. You're already shown a proof of concept in a model crop, for example, and now you're testing it in a focus crop. That's when we sort of engage and help the scientists make the technology or de-risk the technology.
and take it through various product development advancements so that it is more market ready. So bringing together the research scientists and working very closely with in-country partners in our focused countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, sort of to bring all the partners together and to advance these technologies into market-relevant varieties for smallholders.
Kevin Folta (07:03)
Yeah, that's huge
because we're not trained in that. Like we're not trained in the what what do we do once we have a great product in hand? And then the other problem is the timing that it takes this could take years to do. And most funding organizations are funding for short little periods of time, you know, two, three years. And so this is this seems like they're like a really good thing. So is this the kind of organization that would maybe be open to
continually funding a given project if there's promise and kind of seeing it through from the lab bench until it gets into the field.
Brigitte Weston (07:40)
Yeah. so we have I think three main advantages. And the first one, being a nonprofit and an affiliate of the Gates Foundation gives us a lot of convening power. We bring together a lot of partners and teams working on the same problem. So the second is we have patient capital. Like to your point for timelines, we can take problems that are really hard to solve and that take longer to solve.
And we can put patient capital behind it. And third, we really like to secure freedom to operate along the way for our smallholder farmers to ensure that they get the technologies they need royalty-free. So those
Kevin Folta (08:27)
That's
Brigitte Weston (08:27)
are the three areas that we're always focused on.
Kevin Folta (08:31)
That's really good. That helps a lot because one of the other questions that always comes up for me is that when you're working inside the industrialized world, there's a profit motivation to redevelop seeds or come up with better cultivars, that kind of thing, that you don't necessarily see, at least in the beginning, in the developing world. And so when organizations like Gates Ag One, you're focusing on world staple crops that really have had very little commercial venture capital investment.
cassava, cowpea, millet, sorghum, those kinds of things. So what are some of the key production bottlenecks that your organization seeks to resolve?
Brigitte Weston (09:11)
I think there are like three main bottlenecks that we see. And the first one is yield. A lot of these crops, such as cassava and cowpea, and even sorghum, they haven't benefited from decades of investment in breeding. So they have they're already lagging behind in terms of improved genetics. And also the yield benefit is needed.
even more so, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and some parts of South Asia due to climate change and also due to the environmental conditions that smallholder farmers are growing their crops in. The second area that we're very focused on is
Can I retake? Yeah.
Kevin Folta (09:59)
Yeah, sure, go for it. Let me put a little that
no well that that makes
Brigitte Weston (10:04)
Yeah.
Kevin Folta (10:04)
a little that makes a mark on my a v a visually identifiable mark on my audio output.
Brigitte Weston (10:13)
on
the audio thing. Okay. Do you want me to repeat what I just said or can I just go to the second point?
Kevin Folta (10:18)
you can go to second point, however you like, or I can ask you the question again and then just flow right into it, whatever works best.
Brigitte Weston (10:26)
Yeah, maybe ask me question again. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kevin Folta (10:27)
That sometimes works best.
I see remember what the question was. Okay. in at least in the industrialized world, there's a there's a very strong financial incentive to develop and commercialize new crops because you can sell the seeds. But in the developing world, the staple crops really haven't received like as as much commercial venture investment. And things like cassava, cowpea, millet, sorghum, those kinds of crops. And so what are some of the key
production bottlenecks that Gates Ag One seeks to resolve.
Brigitte Weston (11:01)
Yeah. Well there's from our perspective three key bottlenecks. And the first one is yield. A lot of these underserved crops such as cowpea and cassava and even sorghum haven't benefited from decades or even a half century of investment in breeding improvements. And the second area is in innovations, in new innovations which can basically, you know, jump
or bring yield gain to a lot of these crops through you know new innovative technologies which take a long time to develop but could leapfrog these crops to a higher yield potential. And the third area is that we see as a current bottleneck for these crops is being able to test for yield in the target countries, in the target germplasm.
Developing networks, partnerships that can help us, you know, test these new innovations in particular these crops across, for example, sub-Saharan Africa is one area that we're very focused on right now.
Kevin Folta (12:14)
Yeah, you mentioned target germplasm, and I think that's really important because like take a place like sub-Saharan Africa, that's not a monolithic consumer base, right? Or a monolithic set of of environmental conditions or farmers. So how much work is actually done with people on the ground there, whether they're plant breeders or directly with farmers or extension folks?
Brigitte Weston (12:36)
Yeah. All of our work is done with partners on the ground in in our focused countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and multiple partners usually in the region. We don't have greenhouses, we don't have field operations, we really are a small group of people, and our main goal is to bring the expertise that we know from the industry and help our partners in Sub-Saharan Africa.
enable them with you know our best practices, our industry best practices, but also being very culturally aware that, you know, different countries and different crops are managed differently and always making sure that we use, you know, culturally appropriate best practices to bring a lot of these innovations to our partners in various countries.
Kevin Folta (13:34)
And when you're looking at candidate projects that are proposed, what criteria determine whether or not those innovations move into your development pipeline?
Brigitte Weston (13:44)
Yeah, we have a large set of criteria. And the first and foremost one is does it fit within our strategic mandate? We really are focused on smallholder farmer crops and smallholder farmer improvements. And we want to ensure that the productivity of these crops also increases. So we look at technologies both that improve productivity, but also that we say
protect the productivity through disease resistance, insect resistance, potentially even weed management approaches. So we have a belief that all of these technologies need to be brought together in target crops to really benefit the smallholder farmer.
Kevin Folta (14:31)
Yeah, but when you bring together a lot of different traits, you're talking about some that have to be prioritized over others because just a degree of difficulty with things like photosynthetic enrichment or nitrogen fixation, for instance. how would you balance things like that versus the really immediate agronomic demands for drought resistance or viral, viral resistance, things like that?
Brigitte Weston (14:53)
Yeah, we call those so some of the things are we call low-hanging fruit. And this is where we also leverage what has been you know done by the private sector in crops in North America, South America. And we can leverage a lot of those technologies, so they're shorter term development cycles for our smallholder farmer preferred crops. So basically leveraging those technologies to create a foundation.
Of a for a crop which is already protected against insects, diseases, and potentially weed management approaches, and then layering on top of that what we call these moonshot areas that we're investing in, such as photosynthetic efficiency, nutrient symbiosis, as well as carbon cycling, and which are longer
Kevin Folta (15:45)
I wanna
Brigitte Weston (15:46)
term development projects.
Kevin Folta (15:48)
Well but w all of these innovations, and especially the ones that involve biotechnology, they're really subject to a problem of fragmentation in the regulatory environment across across the borders in the sub-Saharan Africa. I got to spend time in Uganda in twenty seventeen and it was to assist the science minister helped to prep for his talk with parliament. And it was it was really frustrating to see everything pass and that a framework was going to be established.
To deregulate the crops they already had on the ground. And then that got vetoed and it ended. so other times I'm hearing that Rwanda has a very elegant system that moves through very quickly, and Kenya seems to be a little more progressive too. But how is Gates Ag One working with regulatory authorities to build the trust along with predictable science based approval pathways that can get gene edited or maybe even transgenic traits into the field?
Brigitte Weston (16:45)
We have a philosophy of really working with our partners, so in-country partners. So we wouldn't be directly engaging with regulators per se. We would be supporting our partners who are engaging with the with their regulators and their countries, and we would be supporting them, supporting them with the you know documentation that they need, any best practice documents that they need, etc. We work with countries.
Who have a regulatory framework in place already or are developing a regulatory framework. So those are one of the selection criteria for whether we are going to work with a partner in a given country. But always remember we are not at the forefront. We are always working with partners in those countries. And we're there to support them, to help them build the expertise and the capability so that they can negotiate and
You know, have these conversations themselves.
Kevin Folta (17:48)
I guess the same idea applies to when you actually have a innovation that's developed, a seed line that's developed, for instance, is that now someone has to grow the seeds and be able to distribute them in ways that farmers can actually afford. And so what kind of partnerships do you develop with like local seed companies or maybe, you know, natural other national organizations, public institutions? What are the ways of getting the highest quality planting material into the hands of small farmholders?
when they can actually afford them and want to pay that amount for the innovation.
Brigitte Weston (18:23)
Yeah. So Gates Ag One has been set up sort of to bridge that missing middle. And the missing middle is that gap between, you know, late discovery research and deployment. So we are there to set up help partners bring innovations and technologies through what we call trait development, which is sort of an earlier phase of product development, through all of the if the technology is regulated, and just to say
Gates Ag One is technology agnostic. We have a problem that we want to solve, and if we can solve it with a GM approach or a gene edited approach or a conventional approach, it doesn't matter. But if the technology is regulated, we have experts in house who can work with our partners to help develop the studies, the regulatory studies that are needed for their particular countries to advance those. Then because we're only
you know, five, six years old. We're just starting on this path. we haven't yet deployed a technology. So this is a space we would be working with partners who would be doing the deployment for for different technologies. So we would never be at the forefront of that. Always supporting different partners. And the goal is absolutely to bring in if there are private seat companies who are in working in those countries to bring them on board as well.
Kevin Folta (19:47)
Yeah, they're already
experts in doing this, so yeah, it makes sense. No, I'm just it
Brigitte Weston (19:49)
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
Kevin Folta (19:51)
helps to understand the architecture. So we're speaking with Brigetta Weston, she's the director of product development for Gates Ag One. And this is the Talking Biotech podcast, and we'll be back in just a moment. Then we take a little break here. Everything good? All right, all right, good, good, good.
Brigitte Weston (20:07)
Everything good. Yeah, thank you.
Kevin Folta (20:10)
All right, we'll pick up on the other side here, and
Contacts are bugging me today too. All right, here we go.
Brigitte Weston (20:19)
no
worries. I have a cold too, so I'm like ready to I
Kevin Folta (20:22)
Ha ha ha ha.
Brigitte Weston (20:23)
have lots of frogs in my throat today.
Kevin Folta (20:25)
It's funny, you know, how that works. You get I do that when I'm in class. I can't run out of time talking too much.
Brigitte Weston (20:30)
Yeah, yeah.
Kevin Folta (20:31)
Well, we're about half we're more than halfway done. So we'll just zip through here. Here we go.
And now we're back on the Talking Biotech podcast. We're speaking with Brigetta Weston. She's the director of product development and Gates Ag One. And we're talking about the Gates Ag One initiatives that take place in moving innovation rapidly to stakeholders inside places like sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and doing this through their pipeline by funding different projects and developing partnerships along the way.
And one of the other big hurdles that we typically hear about is that cutting edge breeding platforms and genomic tools are tied up in corporate IP. And so how does Skates One navigate intellectual property issues? And they do this, you know, with the with the big, big ag firms that like to keep this proprietary. But how does Gates Ag One do this to be able to license traits or technologies in royalty freeways so that the innovations can get to the end users?
Brigitte Weston (21:34)
is that is an excellent question Kevin and it's really the one of the competences that Gates Ag One brings also to the table in that we as we work with our researchers brilliant researchers from different academic universities around the world we encourage them to protect the technologies as well and we have a team who can help the universities file their patents
So the intellectual property always stays with the university. And in exchange for that help, we could also license in if we so choose that technology. These technologies are focused on smallholder farmer needs, but because we're focused on improving yield in these smallholder farmer crops, sometimes these technologies could have relevance also for crops in North America or South America. And this is where we would take this.
technology, these licenses, and leverage them with the private sector. And you know, how do you bring the private sector to the table if you have something interesting to talk to them about? We're investing in moonshots to improve yield in crops. That's something that most multinationals and private sector companies working in the ag space are interested in. And these are hard targets. They take a long time to develop. So
If we find something that is showing some proof of technology, so if we show some de-risking of the technology, they're very interested and come to the table. And then we can talk about leveraging technologies. Maybe they can enable us with certain technologies that we need for our smallholder farmer crops in exchange for these technologies, which could help improve their crops in South America and North America, for example.
Kevin Folta (23:34)
Well it's it's an admirable mission, but let me give you like my perspective as a basic science guy who you know, I mean I I love the application, but so many moonshots really are starting it that we don't know their moonshots yet. So, in other words, you mentioned de-risking, but is shouldn't there be a phase of things that's risking and and taking some more trans transformational approaches as well? in other words, the things that we don't know.
that we have no idea what might ooze out of the tube that could have tremendous impacts downstream that if we're always working on application of current innovation that shows some promise, we may be missing something. And a great example are GLP one drugs that you know that this was a strange set of peptides that just eventually, thanks to a Gila monster and its saliva, turned into be a billion dollar industry. And so could we be missing something by not funding some of those
early types of research as well as the stuff that's moving through to application.
Brigitte Weston (24:39)
Good thing is that we work very closely with other funding agencies who are working and funding that early research very closely. Our biggest partner is the Gates Foundation, for example. And some of the moonshots that we're working on, those were actually funded for almost a decade by the Gates Foundation first.
And once they found those nuggets that were actually translating in model crops and moving into focus crops, that's when we stepped in and got involved. So we're working with other funding agencies very closely who actually fund exactly that type of research.
Kevin Folta (25:19)
very good. Yeah. So the other problem that I always see is the herding cats problem that you're dealing with public-private partnerships where you're looking at very different incentives and long-term goals of academic research labs versus commercial breeding programs, that kind of thing. And so what kind of operational lessons have emerged from those kinds of co-development projects?
Brigitte Weston (25:41)
Yeah, I think the biggest operational lesson I think that we've learned in some of those private public sector collaborations is that when we work with the private sector, there's an expectation that we are, if they are providing us with their enabls of their enabling technologies, that we are going to be stewarding those using industry best practices. So when we work with the
public sector or with our partners in country, we need to ensure that they can meet those same standards that our private sector partners are expecting. So that's really where I mean we love to work in the space. This is where we shine. Most people who work at Gates Ag One have come from the private sector. And so we fully understand the stewardship and the best practices needed for advancing
new innovations through a biotech product development pipeline and having the ability to, you know, work with our partners and country, teaching them what we know, training them and showing them how they can get certified for certain activities is really the highlight for most of us.
Kevin Folta (26:57)
The the one of the big frustrations that once you get through those problems is how do you actually get technology on the ground and do it in a way that doesn't activate the the pushback against agricultural biotechnology? And this has been something I've been immersed in in 30 years now, is that we still continue to see misinformation campaigns and really pervasive in some of the developing world.
that re and worse is that they're coming from places like Europe and USA, right? So how does the Gates one approach really target public engagement, maybe using farmer led communication, other extension activities to counter antibiotech narratives on the ground before they start?
Brigitte Weston (27:42)
And as I mentioned, we work through our partners. So really enabling
Kevin Folta (27:45)
Yeah.
Brigitte Weston (27:47)
our partners with the right tools, with the right messages is so important. We also believe that talking about the benefits of the product, not about the technologies. You know, you can make a technology usually you can get a product through several means, right?
sometimes you have to use a biotech method, sometimes a conventional method. The conventional method may take you 10 years longer, maybe 15 years longer. But there are different ways to getting to a final product. As I said, we're technology agnostic, but always talking about the benefits of the product to the smallholder farmer and to the consumer, I think is so very important. And getting those messages out and then making sure that there is market pull for.
any new innovation that comes to any region. There has to be market pull. Otherwise we probably shouldn't be spending time in those areas. So making sure that there's market pull, that the consumers really want this this trait and that the smallholder farmers really want these improved varieties is so very important.
Kevin Folta (28:59)
Very good. So if you had to stare into a crystal ball here and look ten, fifteen years down the line, what does true systemic success look like to Gates Ag One? I mean, what crop or what trait in your current four portfolio really has the potential to create the biggest change in rural smallholder food security?
Brigitte Weston (29:20)
It's tough to say any one given trait because we always think of a bundle of traits, right? You have anything to make a step change in yield productivity, but then again, you have to protect the yield productivity gain through technologies that protect the crop against insects, against diseases, viral pests, etc. So having a combination of those two things, crop protection traits.
as well as this moonshot of a a yield step change. I think that to us, if we look 15 years down the road and if we could see that in smallholder farmer crops like cowpea, cassava, even some of the other crops which aren't truly smallholder farmer, but maize for example, tropical maize, which is an important cereal in sub-Saharan Africa.
We can make step change yield improvements in sub-Saharan Africa with those crops and protect that step change yield gain, I think would be a huge success for Gates Ag One.
Kevin Folta (30:30)
Well, this has all been really eye-opening. It really helps me understand the organization better and the mission and some of the things that are going on. But what are some of the neglected to ask maybe one of the most important question is what questions is what is what are the major suite of crops that you're working on that are being funded currently?
Brigitte Weston (30:48)
Yeah, great. Yeah, we're working on three we call those dicots. That's cassava is one of them, which is a starch crop grown large well actually across West Africa predominantly as well as East Africa. we also work on a protein crop, cowpeas, which is the main protein crop grown in Nigeria. We are also working on soybean, and soybean is a small crop in sub-Saharan Africa currently.
But it has huge potential. It's growing. Smallholder farmers are growing it for protein on farm to feed their families, but also there's a market for it also for livestock feed. And then the three monocots are maize, tropical maize for sub-Saharan Africa, sorghum, as well as rice. So these three cereals are also very, very important for the region.
Kevin Folta (31:44)
very good. I I've actually seen soybeans growing there before and and which is ri was really interesting. I was really surprised. But very cool that that's being done. So if people wanted to learn more about what's happening with Gates Ag One, where would they look for more information?
Brigitte Weston (32:00)
Yeah, they can come and visit our, well, first of all, they can listen to this podcast and already. And then the second
Kevin Folta (32:05)
They might be doing that already.
Brigitte Weston (32:09)
is they can come and visit our website. It's gatesag1.org. But always remember you want to know what our partners are doing. To find out what we're doing, find out what our partners are doing. And we highlight our partners on our website. So I invite all of you to please come and take a look at what we're doing.
Kevin Folta (32:30)
Yeah, that's the way to do it, right? It's so thank you very much for joining me today. So this is Bir Brigitte Weston, Director of Product Development for Gates Ag One. Thank you for joining me and I hope you join me again down the road as more successes hit the field.
Brigitte Weston (32:44)
Thanks so much, Kevin. It's been a pleasure.
Kevin Folta (32:46)
And please check out the website and take a look. I did last night and really got an idea as to the field and the scope and the feel of what they're doing there and some of the folks that they're looking to serve. It is really an expansion on some of the initiatives of what we've classically ascribed to the Gates Foundation, only this way, maybe with a little more targeting using those local partners. This is the Talking Biotech podcast, and we'll talk to you again next week.
All right. Any other questions I should have asked you that I didn't ask you? I I think we zip through pretty good. But do that,
Brigitte Weston (33:17)
No, I think it's good. Yeah.
Kevin Folta (33:21)
but please, you know, when something breaks that's kind of a big deal, even if it's little, like you know, like maybe five minutes to discuss, we could do a little update. So real easy. All right.
Brigitte Weston (33:30)
Okay. Yeah,
that sounds good. I will let Katie Taft know she's our communications manager and give her a little heads up. I think you
Kevin Folta (33:40)
Yeah.
Brigitte Weston (33:40)
might have been interacting with Michael Hoovel. He's
Kevin Folta (33:43)
Yes, yeah.
Brigitte Weston (33:44)
he's one of our partners or consulting firms that also work on the communications side, so I can let him know.
Kevin Folta (33:49)
Well that's good. Yeah. Well if you and if you ever have if there's ever any opportunities where you're looking for a a guy who knows the science inside and out and is is pretty good with strategic communication and loves being able to get involved in these things. I've always I'm always interested. I've got about I would say ten years in of gas in the tank yet and I really would love to change gears. So
Brigitte Weston (34:12)
Where are you Kevin, where are you located? In Florida. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Northern Florida. Yeah.
Kevin Folta (34:15)
I'm in Gainesville, Florida. I'm at University of Florida. Yeah, and I you
know, I my wife farms, so I can't go anywhere. we're
Brigitte Weston (34:22)
Cool.
Kevin Folta (34:23)
at farmers market every Saturday morning.
Brigitte Weston (34:25)
Fun, fun.
Kevin Folta (34:26)
And yeah, and it's that means I get to farm too. but yeah, no no I'm
Brigitte Weston (34:30)
lovely. lucky. No, really nice.
Kevin Folta (34:33)
well I I love it. What today we're harvesting persimmons all night, but but
Brigitte Weston (34:37)
hello.
Kevin Folta (34:39)
you know I'm I'm
always very interested in exploring other opportunities even if they're just for part time because
Brigitte Weston (34:45)
Yeah.
Kevin Folta (34:45)
I'm I'm really good at the strategic communication side and I I know how people think. I'm good at persuading people. I'm you so I got a lot of background in communications and persuasion. So anytime if if yeah, well
Brigitte Weston (34:57)
excellent. We need to talk to Katie then. Have you met Katie Taft?
Kevin Folta (35:02)
I no I don't know Katie. Yeah.
Brigitte Weston (35:03)
No, okay. I will
put a little I'll put I'll connect the two of you. Yeah.
Kevin Folta (35:07)
Yeah, if there's ever opportunities, even just to s
even just to say here's how I'd do it, you know, that's great. But Sure.
Brigitte Weston (35:12)
Exactly. Kevin, can you send me your email address? I don't know if I have it yet.
Kevin Folta (35:17)
Yeah, I don't know that I have yours. I tried sending something earlier and it bounced. So I might have got something
Brigitte Weston (35:22)
Okay.
Kevin Folta (35:22)
back.
Brigitte Weston (35:23)
Yeah, it's