Today Shiru is proud to announce the appointment of Rachel Konrad and Mary Clarke as independent board members. We are also thrilled to announce our first official scientific advisor, Dr. Ranjani Varadan.
From the moment I met each of these brilliant women, I knew I needed to involve them in building Shiru. Their diverse backgrounds and interests are huge assets to Shiru towards helping us achieve our ambitious goal of becoming a leading ingredients company. I couldn’t be happier to work alongside Rachel, Mary, and Ranjani to tell our story, create a scalable and successful global business, and build the best ingredients discovery platform that exists. As I know well, our success is entirely dependent on our team. With Rachel, Mary, and Ranjani’s guidance and support our success is that much more imminent.
Read on to learn more about what each of these extraordinary leaders bring to the table and why we’re so excited to work with them.
Rachel Konrad is joining Shiru after five years as Chief Communications officer at Impossible Foods, Head of Communications and Marketing Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, and Director of Communications at Tesla. Rachel’s deep expertise in marketing and communications paired with a true passion for plant based, sustainable food will ensure that Shiru’s mission to reduce the world’s reliance on animals for food by providing delicious, cost-effective, healthy and sustainable plant-based alternatives.
Mary Clarke is a senior executive in the specialty ingredients industry, with expertise across regulated consumer markets including the food, personal care and pharmaceutical sectors. She is currently Senior Vice President of Innovation at Firmenich. Mary has built, led, and exited successful businesses including heading the North American business for Naturex, a plant-based natural ingredient business acquired by Givaudan for $1.6 billion. She is extremely knowledgeable in critical areas to Shiru’s growth including R&D, business strategy and management.
Dr. Ranjani Varadan’s experience spanning her career both in academia and industry is uniquely relevant to providing value to Shiru on everything from protein biochemistry to R&D enabled partnerships, ingredient discovery, and beyond. Specializing in protein discovery, Ranjani was the first scientist hired by Impossible Foods’ CEO and Founder Dr. Patrick O. Brown in 2011. Over her tenure at Impossible Ranjani rose to become the VP of R&D and then VP of Strategic Ingredients. Ranjani left Impossible Foods earlier this year to launch her next professional chapter as an advisor and science educator at her son’s middle school.
Our growth continues to accelerate at Shiru, enabled by our $17M Series A raise we announced last month. I am so excited to welcome Rachel, Mary, and Ranjani to the Shiru team and to work with them to create better protein ingredients that to feed people more sustainably. Onward!
