John Hamer took charge of agriculture business Monsanto’s corporate venturing unit Monsanto Growth Ventures at the end of 2012. He was a managing director at Burrill & Co for nine years and was chief executive of Arete Therapeutics and Paradigm Genetics. He was a professor of biological sciences at Purdue University and a visiting scientist at DuPont. He has a PhD in microbiology from University of California, Davis, and studied biology and biological sciences at the University of Windsor