Jun 14, 2022
Valent USA announces sales and marketing appointments

Valent U.S.A., San Ramon, California, is appointing new people to its sales and marketing departments.

“Valant is focused on growth and expansion as we work to provide growers with biorational, botanical and conventional solutions that help advance sustainable agriculture across North America,” Matt Plitt, president and CEO, said in a news release. “These moves will further strengthen and grow Valent and better serve our customers, partners and other stakeholders in the years ahead.”

The personnel changes, which become effective July 1, are:

  • Matt Lawrence is director of retail strategy, a new sales role focused on providing alignment of commercial strategies and leadership of Valent’s sales regions. He will lead the four sales regions and focus on strengthening relationships and sales growth with retail customers and their growers across the U.S.  Lawrence joined Valent in 1998 and has had several key sales leadership positions including regional manager, Midwest commercial director and most recently director of strategic accounts.
  • Trey Soud is director of distribution strategy, succeeding Lawrence. He will provide leadership to the strategic account team and further strengthen our partnership with key distribution customers. Soud has extensive experience in the ag industry. He joined the Valent marketing team more than 11 years ago and has led the company’s seed protection business, managed the row crop strategy and served most recently as the director of strategic marketing.
  • (PRNewsfoto/Valent U.S.A. LLC)

    BeckyJo Smith is associate director of sustainable solutions, leading a team across the U.S. that works to drive growth of Valent’s sustainable solutions portfolio of biorational, botanical and conventional products. She will act as champion of Valent’s commitment to advance sustainable agriculture across North America and represent Valent U.S.A. on the Global Sustainable Solutions Business Unit that focuses on biorational sales and services across Sumitomo Chemical regions around the globe. Smith, who joined the company in 2019, brings extensive industry experience.  She has been a key leader on the Valent sustainable solutions team and developed a strong record of directly partnering with customers to increase biorational sales.

  • Jesse Rosales is associate director of strategic marketing and sustainability. He joined Valent in 2020 as manager of crop and brand strategy after serving in various portfolio, product, and sales management roles in the ag industry. Rosales will be responsible for developing strategies that leverage Valent’s unique value proposition of having an integrated portfolio of conventional, biorational and botanical product offerings to help growers increase productivity more sustainably. He will also lead the asset and brand teams responsible for pipeline strategy, pricing strategy and product planning.
  • Joe Short has been promoted to asset management lead. Short has more than 13 years of experience in marketing and business management roles in the crop protection industry, including development projects in Brazil, Argentina, Central America and Europe. He will oversee the asset management process and team while supporting the new global product Rapidicil, a novel herbicide developed by Valent parent company Sumitomo Chemical that is currently pending registration approval.

Smith, Soud and Lawrence will report directly to Dion McBay, vice president of sales for Valent U.S.A.

Valent is conducting a national search for a vice president of marketing to succeed Geoff Quick, who has transitioned into a role leading global business development for Sumitomo Chemical AgroSolutions Division International, including Valent U.S.A. business development. The new marketing vice president will be based at the North American Innovation Center in San Ramon.

 




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