Jun 9, 2021

New director of sales for Vestaron is Kira Bennett

As of June 1, 2021, Kira Bennett Sappington has been named director of sales for Vestaron’s commercial team. While continuing to maintain key grower and dealer accounts, she will be taking on the additional responsibility of managing the western sales team.

Sappington came to Vestaron from Corteva in July of 2019 as Vestaron’s first territory manager and has done a tremendous job introducing Vestaron to the markets in the PNW, as well as spearheading additional responsibilities within the organization including a lead in the roll out of a new ERP.

“Kira has become a great asset to the team both from her deep experience in the specialty industry, to being a commercial resource for product development, marketing, and R&D projects,” Ben Cicora, VP of sales and marketing, said in a news release. “In our evolution as a commercial organization, new opportunities will continue to present themselves, and having such a strong team in place allows us to develop current employees into future leaders of the company.”

“I have enjoyed the challenge of introducing a new product in the PNW and look forward to the additional responsibilities this new role will provide,” shares Sappington. “Our peptide-based products are needed in integrated pest management programs for their efficacy and safety profile. It is a good feeling to be bringing novel solutions to the growers.”

Additionally, Vestaron welcomes Andy Schenk to the sales team. Schenk will be backfilling Kira in the PNW. Andy has spent over 30 years in business development, sales and marketing in the agriculture and ornamental industries with the Scotts Company, Agrium, Syngenta and most recently a specialty micronutrient company based in Ontario, Canada. He has worked extensively with domestic and international distributors and growers.

“Andy is an excellent addition to the team,” Sappington said. “I feel confident that the PNW is going to be covered with his extensive expertise and will make the transition seamless for our customers.”

Vestaron is a company dedicated to improving the safety, efficacy and sustainability of crop protection through migration from synthetic pesticides to peptide-based biopesticides.  Vestaron is initially focused on a class of peptides that kill insect pests efficiently, but are practically safe for humans, beneficial insects and the environment. As part of this, the company has developed an empowered proprietary platform for peptide optimization, fermentation-based peptide production and in planta expression that will allow it to develop a wide variety of biologic crop protection and trait solutions.

Vestaron’s Spear was the winner of both the inaugural 2015 Bernard Blum Award and the 2020 EPA Green Chemistry Award for novel biocontrol solutions. Additionally, SPEAR was included on the short list for the 2020 Agrow’s Crop Science award for best biological.

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