Nishan Majarian

CEO & Co-Founder

Nish is CEO and a co-founder of Agrian. He is responsible for the overall strategic direction of the company, including strategic partnerships, sales, marketing, and finance. Nishan began his career as an aid to California Governor Pete Wilson as the Deputy Director of Advance then as the Director of the Central California Office, where he served as the Governor’s liaison to local businesses, the agriculture community, and elected officials for eleven counties. Prior to Agrian, Nishan was the vice president of sales for the political action network Grassroots Enterprise, a division of Edelman, and founder and CEO of NetFile, the nation’s leading electronic campaign finance reporting company. Nish holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from California State University, Fresno.

Richard Machado

President & Co-Founder

Richard is President and a co-founder of Agrian, and oversees the company’s food processor sales and governmental relations. Before co-founding Agrian, he spent two years at the Economic Development Corporation of Fresno, where he served as President and CEO, recruiting companies and jobs to Fresno County. Prior to that, he was a Director for the California Trade and Commerce Agency in the office of California Governor Pete Wilson. While there, he worked to attract business to California’s agricultural food processing industry. Richard holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from California State University, Fresno. He is an Advisory Board Member of CIFAR (California Institute of Food & Agricultural Research) at the University of California, Davis, and speaks at many agricultural forums.

Andriana Majarian

Chief Operating Officer

As COO, Andriana serves on Agrian’s executive leadership team and oversees all aspects of the day-to-day operations. She ensures the company achieves objectives that align with the strategic business plan, budget, and culture. She also works with Agrian’s marketing manager on all corporate communication efforts. She has over

18 year’s experience in public relations and advertising, having worked for advertising agencies and directing internal marketing departments. Andriana is a graduate of California State University, Fresno.

Peter Brandt

Chief Technology Officer

As Chief Technology Officer for Agrian, Peter oversees all software engineering teams and deliverables. Before joining Agrian in 2013, Peter spent five years at Pelco (Schneider Electric subsidiary) as a Global Engineering Manager and Product Owner for large-scale IP Video storage, transmission, analytics, and embedded Linux software and hardware products/teams in the high-liability video surveillance space. Prior to that, Peter spent two years as an engineer on backup and disaster recovery software at Yosemite Technologies.

Joshua Frese

Principal Software Architect

As Principal Software Architect and co-founder for Agrian, Joshua is responsible for working both with product management and the engineering teams to ensure continuity between all engineering silos at Agrian. Before joining Agrian in 2003, Joshua spent two years at eWorldAg as Director of software development. Prior to that, he was a senior Unix systems administrator at Verado/Firstworld Communications. Joshua holds a Bachelor’s degree in Management and Organizational Development from Fresno Pacific University. He is also a member of the Fresno City College technology advisory board and teaches technology part-time at that institution.

Todd Rickets

Senior Vice President of User Experience/User Interface

Todd brings seven years of agricultural project management experience to Agrian. Previously, Todd worked for John Deere as a Product Manager in their mobile division; as a Manager of Customer Services, where he oversaw the implementation and support of their web-based enterprise software applications; and as a Manager of Software Quality Assurance where he oversaw the testing of new products. He is a graduate of California State University, Chico.

Rebekah Gilman

Controller

Rebekah is responsible for oversight of all accounting, tax, and financial activities, as well as managing Agrian’s annual audit and banking relationships. She also directs a team that serves client invoicing, accounts payable, payroll, and human resources. Rebekah brings a deep financial background to Agrian with over seven years of experience in public accounting. Rebekah is a graduate of California State University, Fresno.

Tom Feaver

Director of Regulatory Affairs

Tom is the Director of Regulatory Affairs and brings over 25 years of experience to Agrian in crop protection. He is a third-generation farmer, pesticide applicator, and training and safety specialist. Tom oversees Agrian’s label compliance database. He’s been a member of the Pesticide Applicators Professional Association for over 20 years and a graduate of California State University, Fresno.

Joan Vernon

Global Regulatory Affairs Manager

Joan brings 15 years of enforcement, interpretation and investigation experience of federal, state, and local agricultural laws/regulations. Prior to joining Agrian, Joan served as the Deputy Agricultural Commissioner/Sealer in the Pesticide Division of Kings County. During her time with the Kings County Agricultural Commissioner’s office she worked in many of the department programs enforcing laws and regulations that ranged from, pesticide use enforcement, federal egg inspection; assisted grower adherence to state, local, federal and international quarantines; pest detection; Organic certification and statistics/natural disaster reporting. Joan continues to hold eight inspector licenses, two deputy licenses, one Commissioner and one Sealer of Weights and Measures license. She is also a graduate of California State University, Fresno.

Evan Garabedian

Sales Strategist

Evan began his career at Pelco, Inc., managing software and international projects. Later, after the acquisition of Pelco by Schneider Electric, Evan was invited to join the Solutions and Technology Office, where they developed and took to market an innovative new surveillance solution, MultiSight. Evan ran MultiSight within the greater Schneider Electric organization. Currently, Evan serves as Agrian’s Sales Strategist directly Agrian’s global sales team. He received his Bachelor of Science from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in Business double concentrating in International Management and Information Systems Analysis and Design, minoring in Statistics. While at Cal Poly, Evan performed in the University Jazz Band, where he toured Asia, recorded, and became recipient and a life member of the Jazz Federation of SLO County.

Bret Menagh

Vice President Business Development, US Operations

Bret brings broad experience in sales management, sales training, and marketing to Agrian. He has previously held sales, marketing, and management positions at top-tier agricultural companies. At Agrian, he leads the company’s sales and business development initiatives. Bret is a graduate of Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

Ed Siatti

Country Director, Brazil

Ed is an agronomist with over 20 years of experience selling within the ag industry. Ed has spent his entire career as a technology evangelist promoting solutions that provide profitability and sustainability for his home country of Brazil. Ed is based in São Paulo, Brazil.

Jeremy Browne

Country Director, Australia

Jeremy, a native of King Island, Australia, brings 20+ years of experience within the technology space to Agrian. He has extensive precision agriculture experience in both a support and sales capacity. Jeremy is based in Adelaide, Australia, and is an avid pilot.

Andy Pringnitz

Business Strategy Associate

Andy Pringnitz is a Business Strategy Associate for Agrian. Andy grew up on a corn and soybean farm in Iowa and studied agricultural business and economics at Iowa State University. After Iowa State, he spent two years in management and strategy consulting for Context Network. While he was with Context, Andy worked on market research, strategy, and due diligence projects for leading food and agriculture companies in the US and globally. After two years in consulting, Andy joined Granular in 2014 as their first on-the-ground sales rep. While at Granular, Andy was involved with signing up the company’s first set of customers and laying the foundational practices for a growing sales organization. In 2017, Andy left Granular to pursue his MBA at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. While at Stanford, Andy diversified his agricultural experience into the food industry and spent the summer of 2018 interning with David Friedberg’s food and ag-focused venture capital firm, The Production Board. After wrapping up his MBA in 2019, Andy is now excited to put multiple aspects of his background to work in a business strategy role for Agrian. Andy holds a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Business, Economics, and International Agriculture from Iowa State. University and an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

Katy Preis

Marketing Manager

Katy directs all the day-to-day operations of Agrian’s marketing, advertising, and public relations efforts. This includes brand management, creating promotions and campaigns, coordinating campaigns with the sales team, graphic design, and company communications, such as print materials, the web site, newsletters, social media content, and press releases. Katy is a graduate of California State University, Fresno.

Blake DeBrock

Vice President Client Success

Blake brings deep agronomy experience to the client success team. After graduating from Augustana College in Illinois, he started his career at a large Ag retailer. He worked in agronomy sales and eventually became Operations Manager for a branch. He joined Agrian in 2017 and quickly became a leader within the company. Blake manages a large team of client success specialists, all focusing on training and adoption of the Agrian toolset.

Jana Triffon

Senior Enterprise Specialist

Jana is responsible for the oversight of day-to-day operations within Client Services. In parallel, Jana also services both the Northwestern and Southern regional territories. Jana has been a part of the agricultural industry for over twelve years, working six years in the regulatory field, conducting pesticide application inspections, regulatory audits, and produce export certifications. Jana is a graduate of California State University, Fresno.

Daisy Cervantes

Director of Support Services

Daisy Cervantes serves as Agrian’s Director of Support Services. She joined Agrian at its infancy in 2004 as employee number four. With over 20 years’ experience in the Agriculture industry, on both the supplier and retail side, Daisy oversees Agrian’s main support call center operations. She also serves as Agrian’s ticket master, ensuring customer development requests are fulfilled.