Your Iowa Corn Opportunities team

JON LEAFSTEDT, Board Manager
Jon Leafsedt serves as Managing Director for Kincannon & Reed, a leading retained executive search focused on recruitment of executives into food, agribusiness, and life sciences organizations.

Prior to joining Kincannon & Reed in 2007, Leafstedt served in wide-ranging executive roles in global agribusiness and development-stage technology companies. Most recently, he served as President and General Manager of Chromatin, Inc., a plant biotechnoloty firm.Also, he was President and COO of Phytodyne, Inc., another venture capital-backed biotechnology company, and was responsible for worldwide intellectual property and regulatory efforts for a nutritional ingredient manufacturer, Kemin Industries. Prior to these posts, he led state government affairs programs for the agrichemical businesses for BASF/American Cyanamid preceded by an early career grounding in field sales and marketing management in Cyanamid's animal health products department.

Leafstedt has chaired the Iowa Biotechnology Association and was a committee leader at the Animal Health Institute, American Feed Industry Association, and the American Crop Protection Association (now CropLife America). Leafstedt is an honors graduate of the University of Iowa's MBA program and the animal science program at South Dakota State University, and has served as an adjunct instructor in the University of Iowa's MBA program.