ACG Boston | Serving Up Innovation, Investments & Growth in the Food Industry

Adam is the CEO and Co-founder or Mori. He has spent his career developing and translating technologies in the areas of food, agriculture, healthcare, and nutrition. He was previously a postdoctoral associate in the Langer Lab at MIT where he managed several projects focused on improving healthcare and nutrition in the developing world. He was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2017. Adam holds a BS in Chemical Engineering and a PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Maryland.

Marcia Hooper currently serves as a Partner of Branch Venture Group, LLC, an angel investing group focused on food startups, targeting food products, food technology, business services for food-related companies, ag-tech, and sustainability. She has over 35 years of venture investing experience having been a partner at Advent International and Ampersand Ventures. She also serves as a Senior Advisor to Bowside Capital, a private equity firm focusing in the small capitalization market. Marcia has served as a Director of over 30 private and publicly listed companies and began her career at IBM in marketing. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry and mathematics from Brown University. She also earned a Master of Arts degree in chemistry from Columbia University and a Master of Business Administration degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Business.

Briana has dedicated her life to doing well by doing good. Since taking over as CEO at Atlantic Sea Farms in 2018, she and her team have expanded the company to work with 24 partner farmers from Portland to Eastport. Bri has followed a winding path that brought her to kelp - including serving several tours as a diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service, starting and selling a wholesale bakery in Portland focused on pies with an international flair and employing recent refugees resettled to the area, and creating the first Economic Development programming suite at the Maine-based Island Institute. She is an avid gardener, an obsessive cook, and a proud mother of two rad sons. In 2020, Bri was named an Eating Well Magazine Food Hero, awarded the Specialty Foods Association's Business Leadership Award, and had the honor of sitting on several state, national, and global aquaculture and business policy boards.

Tara Levine is a global business leader and board member with a 25-year track record of successfully leading businesses through inflection points, overseeing global and North American brands from $2B to $200M. She is currently the President of Mayfield Advisory, working with CPG businesses to create the strategies and go-to-market plans to scale their brands. She previously was the Chief Growth Officer for Inari, an agricultural tech firm, and also served as GM, North America & Vice President at Converse/Nike, held multiple leadership roles at Ocean Spray including Managing Director, Europe, Middle East, Africa based in London, and VP, Corporate Strategy and M&A, and led businesses at Gillette and P&G. She was the founding Director of Research and Advisory Services at Catalyst, a think tank advancing women in business, creating their consulting business, and writing the book, “Creating Women’s Networks.” She serves as a board member for Repsly, Grapery and the Massachusetts Women’s Forum, and holds an MBA from Harvard University and a BA from Brown University. She lives in Boston with her husband and two sons.