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MEET OUR INSIDERS Check out Page 30 for expert advice on everything from biologicals to software and data management. Advice from industry experts ABM 1ST CEO AND CO-FOUNDER DAN CUSTIS EES COMPANIES OWNER AND PROFESSIONAL ENGINEER JEFF ELWER ISSUES INK DIRECTOR CLIENT SERVICES LINDSAY HOFFMAN KSI CONVEYORS DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT JASON KAEB AGRONOMIX PRESIDENT CEO AND FOUNDER DIETER MULITZE GRO ALLIANCE PRESIDENT JIM SCHWEIGERT EUROFINS BIODIAGNOSTICS VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS DENISE THIEDE As CEO Dan Custis oversees all company financial marketing and sales operations as well as new product development. Custis agricultural expertise is centered in the fungicide and insecticide seed treatment and legume inoc- ulant markets. He has worked for and held various positions with national and multinational companies. Custis received his Bachelor of Science in agriculture from Eastern Kentucky University and his masters in business with a focus on small business develop- ment and startups from Regent University. Jeff Elwer a Professional Engineer is the founder owner and presi- dent of EES Companies an engineering procurement and construction company head- quartered in Des Moines Iowa. With more than 39 years of expe- rience Elwer has completed proj- ects across various industries in several states within the United States as well as Mexico Puerto Rico Guatemala Argentina South America India Bulgaria and Romania. Throughout his career he has helped clients develop solutions to improve efficiency productivity and safety. Passionate about agriculture Lindsay Hoffman serves as direc- tor client services for CREATE by Issues Ink. In this role she is com- mitted to finding solution-driven options for clients to create a plat- form for success. Prior to joining Issues Ink Hoffman worked in the agribusiness sector and brings expertise in agronomy sales and marketing to the table. At Issues Ink she has worked as part of both the content and business development teams. She brings a unique perspective to any CREATE project she works on. A Kansas State University gradu- ate Jason Kaeb earned a degree in management information sys- tems and operations manage- ment. After graduation he worked for Sprint Nextel before joining KSi Conveyors. Kaeb has served in various positions including operations automationcontrols service and sales. As director of business development he lever- ages his broad understanding of the seed handling and treatment industry to provide solutions to customers and maintains relation- ships with some of the largest and most influential companies. Drawing on his experience in developing plant breeding soft- ware since the 1970s and working as a plant breeder Dieter Mulitze Ph.D. released the first version of AGROBASE and incorpo- rated Agronomix Software in 1990. In June 2001 AGROBASE Generation II a fully relational soft- ware system was released. Then in 2009 a more powerful ver- sion was released using MS-SQL Server as the back-end database. Seed companies government research centers and universities in more than 40 countries now use AGROBASE Generation II. A third-generation seedsman Jim Schweigert grew up in the busi- ness. He earned a degree in public relations from the University of Minnesota and worked for corpo- rate public relations firms before joining the family business full time in 2003. He has since been active in the American Seed Trade Association the Independent Professional Seed Association and earned his masters in seed tech- nology and business from Iowa State University. As president Schweigert manages client con- tracts and crop planning as well as business development and new market opportunities. Denise Thiede is a Ph.D. and a Registered Genetic Technologist RGT and has been with Eurofins BioDiagnostics for 14 years. Eurofins offers a portfolio of more than 100000 reliable ana- lytical methods for characterizing the safety identity purity com- position authenticity and origin of products and biological sub- stances. Thiede holds a Bachelor of Science from St. Olaf College a masters from the University of Illinois and her doctorate in evolutionary plant biology from Michigan State University.