Meet Our Team

Like many of the Ag Solutions Capital’s team, I grew up in a family tied to the land. In my case, this connection was in the field of landscape architecture and ecological design. From my early youth, I had the privilege of joining my grandfather, a landscape architect and artist, on design visits to botanical gardens, marinas, corporate headquarters, and college campuses. This upbringing was the beginning of my passion for thoughtful design, development, and utilization of rural and urban lands for their highest and best uses.

While studying at Wheaton College, I developed an interest in agriculture leading me to take an immersive internship at a diversified farm. This experience gave me exposure to the many challenges and opportunities along the agricultural market value chain.

Following college, I was fortunate to continue to expand my agricultural interest and experience while developing investment skill at Resource Land Holdings (“RLH”), a leading private equity investment firm in natural resource real estate market. While also directing investments in timber and other non-agriculture asset types, my primary responsibility and focus was on RLH’s varied agriculture investments throughout the United States. For the last several years, as a founding partner at Avodah Capital Group, I have led sourcing and capitalization of industrial manufacturing, development land, retail, office, and other commercial real estate investments.

At both RLH and Avodah, creatively partnering with operators has been a key to unlocking and realizing value on investments. Through a career of partnering with the people, farmers, and operators that create value in their businesses and properties, I bring a deep value for relationships and an appreciation for the importance of aligning the goals and interests of operators, investors, lenders, and others. With Ag Solutions Capital, I enjoy working with our clients and partners to solve unique challenges with creative and innovative solutions.

From young age, I learned of the vast scope of risks and the creativity and innovation required to create sustainable success in production agriculture from my family’s dryland hay operation in Texas. This ethic was engrained into me during my development and is present in my approach today.

Subsequent to graduating from Baylor University in business I utilized the experiential knowledge from my youth in the real estate private equity space specializing in equity investments in agricultural land and operations and other resource based real estate investments. With extensive experience in capital structure optimization which balances the near-term profitability and long-term stability of an operation, I employ an ownership mentality in the key decisions that operators must make when deciding how to capitalize the opportunities presented to them.

In addition to Ag Solutions Capital, I am a member in an agricultural research operations business in which we manage test plots across the US corn belt for a global leader in agribusiness.

I am excited to work on multifaceted problems requiring complex innovative solutions collaboratively at Ag Solutions Capital with an extremely talented team with a diverse set of experiences.

I was born and raised in the beautiful Walla Walla Valley of South Eastern Washington and took a keen interest in agriculture during my high school years. That took me to Washington State University where I ultimately graduated with an Ag Economics degree. Finance was my passion and that took me to the banking industry where I spent 13 years with Rainier National Bank, one of the industry’s largest ag banks. After cutting my teeth in commercial and ag lending, I took a position as Credit Manager for the rich Columbia Basin Region.

In 1991 I was presented with an opportunity to move to Northwest Farm Credit Services and help start an agri-business group focused on vertically integrated operations. The project was a roaring success, and our company went from virtually zero market share in the agri-business space to the market share leader across many commodity groups. Over a twenty year plus period I was responsible for booking over a billion dollars of relationships and got to observe and learn from the “who’s who” of agribusiness owners, managers and CFOs.

My portfolio at Northwest was heavy with vertically integrated tree fruit, potato, onion, vegetable and hop relationships. During my tenure at Northwest, I lead both the Tree Fruit and Row Crop Industry Teams.

As my customer list grew, I became much more active in the capital markets space, using participations and syndications to help my growth orientated customers. I enjoyed this experience and the opportunity to build relationships with other lenders through the United States.
In the Spring of 2018, I elected to retire early to open a consulting practice. Columbia Business Consultants, LLC has been a broad-based consulting practice that touched the areas of commodity industry analysis for investors, strategic planning, family business transition, business improvement and loan sourcing/lender negotiations. I particularly enjoyed the day-to-day variety of the practice and quickly realized that I was continuing to do what I did for 40 years in my banking career, helping clients achieve their goals and dreams.

I am excited to join the Ag Solutions team and am committed not only to the success of our group but also the success of our clients and investors.