Passionate Leaders

Dan is the Chief Executive Officer of Trace Genomics. Dan started his career as a Sales Agronomist at Wilbur-Ellis in 1983, where he went on to have a rewarding 37-year career. His Wilbur-Ellis experience includes field, state, region and division operations in North America and Latin America. For the final 16 years, he served as President for the company’s Agribusiness Division. Under his leadership, the division tripled in sales and profitability to gross more than $2 billion annually, spanning 170 locations with 3,000 employees. Dan has overseen more than 60 acquisitions and sponsored the development of Wilbur-Ellis’ seed technologies business, as well as its farm decision-making software platform AgVerdict. Dan joined Trace Genomics as CEO in November, 2019. Dan earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Agribusiness from the University of Wisconsin-Platteville and completed the Stanford University Business School Executive Program.

Diane is the Co-Founder of Trace Genomics. After publishing her thesis on the cover of Nature Structural Molecular Biology, Diane worked at Palantir Technologies as a Machine Learning Software Engineer. At Palantir, she built predictive models for healthcare, merchandising, law enforcement, and fraud detection. Following Palantir, Diane joined the early founding team at MetaMind (acquired by Salesforce) to build solutions to medical imaging problems using deep learning technology. Diane was selected to Forbes 30 Under 30 Science list in 2017. Diane earned a Ph.D in Genetics from Stanford University with Nobel laureate Dr. Andrew Fire, and a B.S. in Molecular Biology, Biochemistry and Computer Science from Simon Fraser University, where she graduated top of her class.

Poornima is the Co-Founder of Trace Genomics. After completing her Ph.D, Poornima did a postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, and worked closely with the Broad Institute and the Ministry of Health in Nicaragua. She is the author of 12 publications that have been referenced over 1,450 times, where she pioneered the use of genomics technologies to address fundamental questions in microbial diseases. Poornima was awarded the Career Development Award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Sidney Raffel award for Outstanding Achievement in Graduate Studies, and the Gabilan Stanford Graduate Fellowship. Poornima earned a Ph.D in Microbiology and Immunology from Stanford University with Nobel laureate Dr. Andrew Fire, and a B.S. in Molecular Biology from University of Texas at Austin where she was in the Dean’s Scholars Program.