Vive Crop Protection expands leadership team

Vive Crop Protection expands its leadership team with the addition of Doug Baumann, VP of Product Development, and the promotions of Sara Zinck to VP of Marketing and Robert Khazam to General Counsel.

Doug Baumann (left), Sara Zinck (top right), Robert Khazam (bottom right)

Doug Baumann joins the Vive team as VP of Product Development where he will lead Vive’s efforts to build the highest velocity innovation engine in agriculture. Baumann comes to Vive from Syngenta Canada where he most recently worked as Crop Protection Development Manager. An experienced R&D manager with a strong record of achievement in the agrochemical industry, Baumann brings 11 years of experience in crop protection formulation, application and field development to Vive. In his own words, he has been, ″Living the science life since ‘99,″ with additional research activity spanning synthetic chemistry, biochemical engineering, and polymer science. He holds a BS in Engineering Chemistry from Queen’s University and a PhD in Biomedical and Chemical Engineering from the University of Toronto.

Vive Crop Protection CEO Darren Anderson says, ″We’re incredibly excited to have Doug aboard our leadership team. With his addition, we have split R&D to set up a new department focused on building our research pipeline, led by Vive Co-Founder and VP of Research, Dr. Jordan Dinglasan. We are excited to develop new conventional and biological Precision Chemistry™ solutions and by 2025, we are targeting to launch five products per year."

A member of the Vive team since October 2020, Sara Zinck was recently promoted to VP of Marketing. She leads Vive's growing marketing team, driving efforts to expand Vive Crop Protection and its next-generation product portfolio. Zinck brings 15+ years of experience with pesticide manufacturers, ADAMA and Bayer, in addition to marketing agency experience and holds a BS in Agricultural Business Management from the University of Wisconsin and a MBA from the University of North Carolina.

Robert Khazam was promoted to General Counsel of Vive Crop Protection, where he leads the legal department, and is Corporate Secretary of the Board of Directors. He also oversees Vive’s ESG initiatives. Khazam previously worked as in-house counsel at Chemtrade Logistics and prior to that, as a corporate and securities lawyer at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP. He is a graduate of Queen’s University Faculty of Law and Western University.

″The expansion of Vive’s leadership team is due in large part to our latest organizational expansion and funding round,″ says Anderson. ″The leadership team will lead the advancement of the product development pipeline while also accelerating commercial deployment of Vive’s Precision Chemistry product portfolio into new North American markets.″