Management Team
Amit Noam
CEO
Mr. Amit Noam is the Chief Executive Officer of Lavie Bio. Mr. Noam has extensive experience as a senior executive, particularly in the agriculture and healthcare sectors, leading teams in the development and execution of commercialization strategies, driving long-term growth and value-creation for businesses. Since 2018, Mr. Noam served as Chief Operating Officer of AgriTask, an ag-tech company, leading the company's commercial and operational strategies, as well as successfully supporting multiple fund-raising rounds. He also has previous experience with leading pharma company, Teva Pharmaceuticals, as well as Shaldor, an Israeli consulting firm, and Themis UAV, providing robotics solutions.
Mr. Noam holds an MBA from Tel Aviv University and a BSc in Industrial and Management Engineering from Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel.
Russ Putland
EVP Commercial & General Manager USA
Mr. Russ Putland is the EVP Commercial & General Manager USA of Lavie-Bio. Mr. Putland brings more than 30 years of experience within large multinational agriculture companies. Prior to joining Lavie-Bio Mr. Putland held several commercial leadership roles within Cargill, FMC, DuPont and AGDATA.
Dor Kestecher
VP Business Development
Mr. Dor Kestecher is the VP of Business Development at Lavie Bio. Previously he served as Head of Insecticides at ADAMA, a leading global Agrochemicals company. Prior to ADAMA, Mr. Kestecher was the R&D Planner for South-East Europe at Syngenta.
Mr. Kestecher holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Plant Science from the Hebrew University and an MBA from the Recanati School of Management at Tel-Aviv University.
Michael Ionescu, PhD
VP Research
Dr. Michael Ionescu is the VP Research of Lavie-Bio. For the last 6 years, Dr. Ionescu has lead the research and optimization activities of novel microbiome-based ag-biological to drive food quality, agriculture productivity and sustainability.
Dr. Ionescu received his PhD degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Life Sciences and Environmental Studies, researching stress response mechanisms in enteric bacteria. He had conducted his postdoctoral research at the University of California at Berkeley in phytopathology, studying cell-cell communication systems in plant pathogens with relation to interaction with host plant.
Amir Bercovitz
VP Development
Mr. Amir Bercovitz is leading the development activities at Lavie Bio. Previously, Mr. Bercovitz served as the operations and Formulation manager for Agrogreen (Minrav), later aquired by Bayer, and as formulation manager for Ecogen Il. Since 1990, Mr. Bercovitz has been involved in the development and production of microbial based products, mainly biopesticides based on live microorganisms - including commercially available Bionematicides (BioNem, Flocter, Nortica, Votivo) and Biofungicides (Aspire, AQ-10, Shemer).
Mr. Bercovitz holds an MSc. Degree in Microbiology from the Hebrew university, Jerusalem