Chief Innovation Officer of AgBiome
Career Path
Growing up in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, Dr. Tracy Raines has always liked the outdoors and nature and exploring things. She fell in love with her high school biology classes and not having much exposure to the possible careers in science, and loving animals, she planned to become a veterinarian. Raines thus went to Virginia Tech for her undergraduate degree in biology. She knew she loved science but realized she did not like working with blood. Raines decided to continue with the biology program and explored the different classes, including many plant biology classes. In her senior year she ended up in a molecular biology lab, and it blew her mind. Thus when she started searching for jobs, she looked for molecular biology labs to keep doing molecular biology. She then found a position at a small startup company called Paradigm Genetics which did ag biotech.
Raines has a passion for startups and small companies. She thinks the opportunity to learn is just amazing at smaller companies. She explained that at a small company “you knew everybody in the company and you got to really learn a lot of things because it was so small." At the time she started, Paradigm had about 20 people. Four years later they went public and grew to 200 plus people. As it grew, it got very chaotic and she felt like she lost the sense that what she was doing was connecting to something worthwhile. She then heard about a startup company called Athenix Corporation. There she helped build their trait discovery program, leading a group of 6 people, where they patented 30 genes in the four years she was there.
At this point she had her first son and decided to be a stay-at-home mom. Though glad she did this, she really missed science and missed teamwork. This was a turning point in her life as she had a choice of either getting another job in industry or doing something else. She wanted to do something bigger, where she could lead a larger team and help build the strategy of a team. She decided the best way to do this was to go to graduate school.
Raines earned her PhD from UNC Chapel Hill, where she studied hormone signaling in plants. She knocking out and overexpressed genes in hormone pathways to look for phenotypes in Arabidopsis thaliana. In the middle of this, she went through some personal difficulties but getting through that, persevering, and continuing grad school is something she is very proud of today. As a single mom going through graduate school she could have quit, but did not. She thinks it makes her who she is today, too. Though she liked academics, she missed the team. She felt there are big problems people are answering, and she really wanted to do something that was going to get in the hands of people that need it. This was when she heard of a startup company called AgBiome.
Current and previous roles in AgBiome
Raines first started in AgBiome building the pipeline and leading the team for their trait discovery program. A way of bringing in funding to AgBiome is external collaborations, and one of their bigger programs was a partnership with Syngenta. She found that the focus partnerships were on another level compared to team collaboration. She thus expressed an interest in leading the team managing the relationship with Syngenta. She needed to be able to update them on the progress made, so part of her responsibilities included reading and understanding all that comes with a collaboration agreement including IP and legal jargon.
After the Syngenta agreement ended she moved into the business development team full time because there was a need there. She began learning about speaking with all these potential collaborators about their technology. Now she talks with potential partners about what AgBiome is doing, listens to their problems, and discusses how AgBiome can solve them. In the past 4 years, she went from a team member to leading a team that negotiates deals trying to bring in partnership revenue, which is a crucial part of keeping the company running. Partnership money is money coming in to fund the research and build the platform just a little better.
What AgBiome does
AgBiome is a start up agriculture biotech company that has brought in about $126 million in funding in the past seven years.They have 100,000 microbes in their collection that they have sequenced and are continually adding to. Their products include crop protection, where they look for whole microbes that have fungicidal, insecticidal, or herbicidal activity, and bring them through discovery to product development.
They have also signed and done deals in animal health. One product/collaboration Raines has worked on was an antibiotic replacement for pigs. A lot of the livestock are fed antibiotics in their feed and that is leading to a lot of antibiotic over-usage. They replace that with a microbe that can give them healthier guts and alleviate problems with diarrhea that young pigs have when they are weaned.
Soil fertility is another area. Mosaic is a fertilizer company looking for greener solutions to add to their portfolio, phosphate is a limited resource and there is a problem with water runoff and contamination. They were looking to add a microbe that could lower fertilizer use and came to AgBiome. AgBiome signed an agreement with them where they built a discovery pipeline to find microbes that will do that for them.
Work-life balance and workplace culture
At AgBiome, people can “make their own schedules as long as their team knows and they are trusted to know the goal and just work towards the goal.” Raines finds she has “never had a job so flexible. The culture is that people are so committed to the company and the culture that they don't want to take advantage of it. People work really hard when they're working and then press each other to get the job done and kind of there's no micromanaging. There's not actually a typical hierarchical structure. There's an accountability chart, but there's no organizational chart where there's like this person reporting to this person.”
As for work/life balance, Raines says “Some days I have to work longer than others. Of course I have called sometimes with other countries that I have to get on a call late at night or early in the morning. But I feel like overall it balances out because of flexibility.” She gives the example of having a call at 8pm, thus takes a 2 hour break in the middle of the day. “During the pandemic, they were very great about letting us work from home and kind of being flexible with what we could get done." She adds, "It's a great place to work.”
Pros and Cons of a small company or start-up
Raines says startups are not for everybody because they can be a little chaotic and everybody has to pitch in with different things at different times. However she enjoys it and would recommend trying out startup companies to see whether or not you like it. With a startup you can really see the whole picture. For example if you're doing gene discovery, you can hear about that gene when it gets to product development and to sales. Where it ends up you know; you don't just pass it along and not know what happens, unlike in a larger company. You are trusted with a lot of information, you know everything that's happening and how it links to the goal. At AgBiome they have this goal of feeding the world responsibly as their mission statement. As a part of AgBiome, Raines feels whatever she is doing that day, she understands how her work is impacting that.
At startups “you're asked to just stretch yourself into new opportunities. And you might not love all those, but you're learning in every situation.” Raines would have never thought she wanted to do business development, but she tried it out and loves it. "Some cons would be that sometimes things change. You may be working on a project that is number-one priority and then priority shifts because you're so small. Everybody has to shift and check on that or help with that. You have to be flexible, and it can be uncomfortable sometimes. Stretching yourself can be uncomfortable, too.”
Raines understands that there's a little uncertainty about funding. However, she is not so sure that there is less stability with smaller companies rather than larger ones. She has seen larger companies lay off people more than the smaller companies.
Advice for students
“I think a lot of kids, even my 17 year old son, think they need to have the road laid out perfectly. Be less hard or strict on your career progression or your educational progression. And just kind of be flexible about what comes your way.”
“Sometimes it's better to take a role that's lateral moving and you learn more than to just keep moving up the ladder. You're getting different experiences and different opportunities, even though it might not feel like you're moving forward. You're still moving forward even though you move sideways for a moment and learn more things and then it adds to your overall career progression.”
“You have to take risks. Yeah, even taking a risk to take some time off with my kids. That was kind of scary too. Nothing's set in stone so take the risks. If it doesn't work out. It's okay to always try something else. ”
“You can always shift courses, I was 30 and went back to school so you don't have to, you can always change course.”
“Look beyond LinkedIn, look around, look at job postings. Even if you're not looking for a job, it shows you new companies that you have never heard of.”
Authors: Diane Nguyen and Andrea Romero
Growing up in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, Dr. Tracy Raines has always liked the outdoors and nature and exploring things. She fell in love with her high school biology classes and not having much exposure to the possible careers in science, and loving animals, she planned to become a veterinarian. Raines thus went to Virginia Tech for her undergraduate degree in biology. She knew she loved science but realized she did not like working with blood. Raines decided to continue with the biology program and explored the different classes, including many plant biology classes. In her senior year she ended up in a molecular biology lab, and it blew her mind. Thus when she started searching for jobs, she looked for molecular biology labs to keep doing molecular biology. She then found a position at a small startup company called Paradigm Genetics which did ag biotech.
Raines has a passion for startups and small companies. She thinks the opportunity to learn is just amazing at smaller companies. She explained that at a small company “you knew everybody in the company and you got to really learn a lot of things because it was so small." At the time she started, Paradigm had about 20 people. Four years later they went public and grew to 200 plus people. As it grew, it got very chaotic and she felt like she lost the sense that what she was doing was connecting to something worthwhile. She then heard about a startup company called Athenix Corporation. There she helped build their trait discovery program, leading a group of 6 people, where they patented 30 genes in the four years she was there.
At this point she had her first son and decided to be a stay-at-home mom. Though glad she did this, she really missed science and missed teamwork. This was a turning point in her life as she had a choice of either getting another job in industry or doing something else. She wanted to do something bigger, where she could lead a larger team and help build the strategy of a team. She decided the best way to do this was to go to graduate school.
Raines earned her PhD from UNC Chapel Hill, where she studied hormone signaling in plants. She knocking out and overexpressed genes in hormone pathways to look for phenotypes in Arabidopsis thaliana. In the middle of this, she went through some personal difficulties but getting through that, persevering, and continuing grad school is something she is very proud of today. As a single mom going through graduate school she could have quit, but did not. She thinks it makes her who she is today, too. Though she liked academics, she missed the team. She felt there are big problems people are answering, and she really wanted to do something that was going to get in the hands of people that need it. This was when she heard of a startup company called AgBiome.
Current and previous roles in AgBiome
Raines first started in AgBiome building the pipeline and leading the team for their trait discovery program. A way of bringing in funding to AgBiome is external collaborations, and one of their bigger programs was a partnership with Syngenta. She found that the focus partnerships were on another level compared to team collaboration. She thus expressed an interest in leading the team managing the relationship with Syngenta. She needed to be able to update them on the progress made, so part of her responsibilities included reading and understanding all that comes with a collaboration agreement including IP and legal jargon.
After the Syngenta agreement ended she moved into the business development team full time because there was a need there. She began learning about speaking with all these potential collaborators about their technology. Now she talks with potential partners about what AgBiome is doing, listens to their problems, and discusses how AgBiome can solve them. In the past 4 years, she went from a team member to leading a team that negotiates deals trying to bring in partnership revenue, which is a crucial part of keeping the company running. Partnership money is money coming in to fund the research and build the platform just a little better.
What AgBiome does
AgBiome is a start up agriculture biotech company that has brought in about $126 million in funding in the past seven years.They have 100,000 microbes in their collection that they have sequenced and are continually adding to. Their products include crop protection, where they look for whole microbes that have fungicidal, insecticidal, or herbicidal activity, and bring them through discovery to product development.
They have also signed and done deals in animal health. One product/collaboration Raines has worked on was an antibiotic replacement for pigs. A lot of the livestock are fed antibiotics in their feed and that is leading to a lot of antibiotic over-usage. They replace that with a microbe that can give them healthier guts and alleviate problems with diarrhea that young pigs have when they are weaned.
Soil fertility is another area. Mosaic is a fertilizer company looking for greener solutions to add to their portfolio, phosphate is a limited resource and there is a problem with water runoff and contamination. They were looking to add a microbe that could lower fertilizer use and came to AgBiome. AgBiome signed an agreement with them where they built a discovery pipeline to find microbes that will do that for them.
Work-life balance and workplace culture
At AgBiome, people can “make their own schedules as long as their team knows and they are trusted to know the goal and just work towards the goal.” Raines finds she has “never had a job so flexible. The culture is that people are so committed to the company and the culture that they don't want to take advantage of it. People work really hard when they're working and then press each other to get the job done and kind of there's no micromanaging. There's not actually a typical hierarchical structure. There's an accountability chart, but there's no organizational chart where there's like this person reporting to this person.”
As for work/life balance, Raines says “Some days I have to work longer than others. Of course I have called sometimes with other countries that I have to get on a call late at night or early in the morning. But I feel like overall it balances out because of flexibility.” She gives the example of having a call at 8pm, thus takes a 2 hour break in the middle of the day. “During the pandemic, they were very great about letting us work from home and kind of being flexible with what we could get done." She adds, "It's a great place to work.”
Pros and Cons of a small company or start-up
Raines says startups are not for everybody because they can be a little chaotic and everybody has to pitch in with different things at different times. However she enjoys it and would recommend trying out startup companies to see whether or not you like it. With a startup you can really see the whole picture. For example if you're doing gene discovery, you can hear about that gene when it gets to product development and to sales. Where it ends up you know; you don't just pass it along and not know what happens, unlike in a larger company. You are trusted with a lot of information, you know everything that's happening and how it links to the goal. At AgBiome they have this goal of feeding the world responsibly as their mission statement. As a part of AgBiome, Raines feels whatever she is doing that day, she understands how her work is impacting that.
At startups “you're asked to just stretch yourself into new opportunities. And you might not love all those, but you're learning in every situation.” Raines would have never thought she wanted to do business development, but she tried it out and loves it. "Some cons would be that sometimes things change. You may be working on a project that is number-one priority and then priority shifts because you're so small. Everybody has to shift and check on that or help with that. You have to be flexible, and it can be uncomfortable sometimes. Stretching yourself can be uncomfortable, too.”
Raines understands that there's a little uncertainty about funding. However, she is not so sure that there is less stability with smaller companies rather than larger ones. She has seen larger companies lay off people more than the smaller companies.
Advice for students
“I think a lot of kids, even my 17 year old son, think they need to have the road laid out perfectly. Be less hard or strict on your career progression or your educational progression. And just kind of be flexible about what comes your way.”
“Sometimes it's better to take a role that's lateral moving and you learn more than to just keep moving up the ladder. You're getting different experiences and different opportunities, even though it might not feel like you're moving forward. You're still moving forward even though you move sideways for a moment and learn more things and then it adds to your overall career progression.”
“You have to take risks. Yeah, even taking a risk to take some time off with my kids. That was kind of scary too. Nothing's set in stone so take the risks. If it doesn't work out. It's okay to always try something else. ”
“You can always shift courses, I was 30 and went back to school so you don't have to, you can always change course.”
“Look beyond LinkedIn, look around, look at job postings. Even if you're not looking for a job, it shows you new companies that you have never heard of.”
Authors: Diane Nguyen and Andrea Romero