David Friedberg

FOUNDING PARTNER

David Friedberg is Founder and CEO of The Production Board, a San Francisco-based holding company that incubates companies and invests at the intersection of food, agriculture, and technology. Within The Production Board’s portfolio, David is also the founder and chairman of several other companies such as eatsa, an integrated restaurant hardware and software licensing business revolutionizing the restaurant industry; as well as Northern Quinoa Production Corporation, the only commercial producer of quinoa in North America.

Prior to founding TPB, David founded The Climate Corporation, where as CEO he led the company from founding through its acquisition by Monsanto in 2013 and into early 2016. The Climate Corporation helps farmers around the world sustainably improve their productivity with digital tools that provide analytics and insights, ultimately improving on-farm decisions. David also held several roles in Corporate Development and Product Management at Google. He is the founder and chairman of Metromile, the only pay-per-mile car insurance provider in the US.

David is a lifelong vegetarian and believes that technology can help humans make better use of our natural resources, delivering to everyone food that is healthy, sustainable, and efficiently produced. David graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Astrophysics.

Pepo Peschiera

CO-FOUNDER & MANAGING PARTNER

Pepo has spent the last 12 years investing in and managing farms, initially in Argentina and for the last 5 years in the US.

Before starting Frontier, he was Senior Vice President at Fall Line Capital leading new farm acquisitions and developments, as well as farm management. Previously, Pepo was Managing Partner at Agro Meridional, a private equity firm in Argentina specializing in the development and execution of agribusiness opportunities. His responsibilities included screening, analysis, development and execution of new agriculture investment opportunities, leading a 10,000 acres farmland development project and row crop agricultural production on 15,000 acres. Prior to Agro Meridional, Pepo was Crop Management Team Leader at BLS Agribusiness in Argentina where he led a team that made management decisions for 25,000 no-till acres of row crops.

Pepo holds an undergraduate degree in Agricultural Engineering from the University of Buenos Aires, where he graduated with high honors, and a Masters in Finance from Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires. Pepo comes from a farming family in Argentina, is a second generation agronomist, and spent most of his childhood assisting his father in the management of farm operations in the Argentine Pampas.

Michael Sesko

CO-FOUNDER & MANAGING PARTNER

Over the past decade, Michael has held a number of key leadership roles in the agriculture technology industry. Most recently, he was a leader on the Strategy team at the Climate Corporation, the world’s largest digital agriculture company, focusing his efforts on long term product strategy, business development and corporate development.

Prior to Climate, Michael focused on technology implementation, leading strategic initiatives at Woolf Farming and Processing, an integrated and diversified grower and food processor of tomatoes, almonds and pistachios in the Central Valley of California. His first agriculture technology project started as Co-Founder and CEO of Encendia Biochar, a soil technology company building carbon-based soil amendments to help growers reduce water and fertilizer use. Michael began his career as an Equity Research Analyst covering the food sector at JP Morgan and Prudential Equity Group.

Michael holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management, an MEM (Masters of Environmental Management) from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and a BA from Colby College.

Graham Jeffries

DATA SCIENCE LEAD

Prior to joining Frontier Farmland, Graham completed doctoral research on remote sensing of crop yields and farm management factors. In conjunction with his academic studies, he held research internships at The Climate Corporation, USDA-ARS, and The Earth Institute at Columbia University. Graham is passionate about applying insights from big geospatial data to farm decision making. His work leverages remote sensing, diverse environmental datasets, and machine learning to optimize investment and management decisions across scales, from plant to region.

Graham earned a PhD and a MS from the Agriculture, Food, and Environment program at Tufts University, and a BA from Hampshire College.

Chris Fedor

GEOSPATIAL ENGINEERING LEAD

Previously, Chris spent 4 years in data operations at Mavrx building out the geospatial services platform, ultimately delivering spatially explicit agronomic data to near 10 million unique farmland acres in the US. Prior to Mavrx, Chris was a geospatial analyst at the Center for Food Security and the Environment modeling trade and land-use in global markets. His interest has centered around how we make the best decisions at the confluence of human and natural systems. He has focused his professional energies on agriculture as it is the oldest, largest, and most fundamental of these systems. Chris is excited to be a part of Frontier Farmland because of the opportunity to fully leverage the past years of accumulated technologies with hands on management. Chris is eager to apply insight directly into action across Frontier’s portfolio of properties.

Chris earned a MS and BS in Earth Sciences from Stanford University.

Bernie Llorente

AGRONOMY & OPERATIONS LEAD

Bernie brings 10 years of experience in farm management and operations. Previously, Bernie was COO of Llorente Hermanos where he managed 20,000 acres of row crops in Argentina.

Prior to Llorente Hermanos, Bernie co-founded Grupo TSA, an agricultural consultancy, where he consulted and provided agronomy services on 90,000 acres across Argentina. Bernie has served as a CREA Group Advisor, advising 9 dairy and agriculture companies, that managed 11,000 acres, in the adoption of new ideas and technologies.

Bernie holds an undergraduate degree in Agronomy from the University of Buenos Aires where he graduated with high honors.

Charles Holmes

INVESTMENT LEAD

Prior to joining Frontier, Charles was an investment associate at Farmland LP where he focused on acquisitions of over 6,000 acres across the west coast; developments of permanent plantings, organic row crops and pasture programs; and monitored the investment performance of Farmland LP’s portfolio. Prior to joining Farmland LP, Charles was an analyst at Sandler O’Neill & Partners, a New York City based private partnership. In this position, Charles provided financial advisory services to publicly listed and privately held property and mortgage REITs and other financial institutions.

Previously, Charles was an associate at Young Woo & Associates, a New York City based real estate developer, where he focused on developments and acquisitions in the United States and Latin America.

Charles earned his undergraduate degree in Economics from Yale University.