A passion for farming and the environment combined with business acumen and research commercialisation experience.
Founded in 2002 as a life science technology commercialisation specialist, Earle & Associates has worked with start-ups in regulated industries (FDA, Health Canada, UK Home Office) including healthcare, plant-based pharmaceuticals, medical devices and pre-clinical drug and vaccine development.
Facilitating company creation and commercialisation of university/research-based technologies, the company has expertise in working with academic institutions including licensing, co-creation and spin-out formation across diverse technologies (e.g. biofilms, vaccines, sleep disorders, wound healing, antimicrobial products, medical cannabis, plant based pharmaceuticals).
Entrepreneur and founder Dr. Mary Ellis was a founding member of a technology commercialisation fund investing in Canadian based health care start-ups and has been a board member for several for-profit and not-for-profit organisations. She currently serves as Chairwoman of FarmTech Society, an industry association that unites and supports the Controlled Environment Agriculture sector, and has previously served on the board of Biotalent Canada, a sector council of the Government of Canada focused on strengthening Canada’s bioeconomy.
Her passion for farming began at a very early age. She grew up on a farm. Her mother and father were pioneers of organic farming and to this day the family still run a regenerative agricultural farm that has not seen chemicals applied to the soil since 1968.
Why technology and innovation hold the key.
Farming did not seem like a wise career choice back in the ‘80s, and having moved to North America, the culture and environment for entrepreneurship was encouraging and highly attractive. Alongside some fellow postgraduate students, she spun out her own company and embarked on a long and rewarding journey into the world of start-ups. This literal deep dive provided first-hand experience of all aspects of starting and running a business – how to bring a product to market, raise investment, build a team, drive sales, and build a strategy.
Since then, she’s been fascinated with start-ups, working mainly in the life sciences, pharmaceutical and Agri-tech sectors across the globe - including Canada, Switzerland, Ireland, and the UK, helping them make industry contacts and scale their businesses.
As an advisor, and where practical as an interim C-suite, she has helped many start-ups navigate those early choppy waters bringing an innovation to market.
Start-ups can sometimes feel like a life lesson in pivoting, from defining a clear research strategy to recognising revenue opportunities in new markets. Mary developed a passion for working with research teams that have commercially promising innovations and still today enjoys rolling up her sleeves to help further develop their value proposition. She saw an opportunity where many companies want to have active R&D departments, but often were not sure where to start. Having spent time at the research bench, she saw the need for a clear roadmap developed in collaboration with the research team.
Fast forward 20 years, and suddenly farming has swung back in favour. The adoption of technology in farming is accelerating and innovation is creating new ways of producing foods and medicines to attempt to satiate the rapidly growing global population. Agriculture is now seen as a wise career choice, and the opportunities within ag-tech focused spinouts are growing like weeds. For agriculture, innovation holds the potential to unlock STEM opportunities for young and old alike, empower youth and women across the globe to access information, technology, and markets as they scale up new solutions to global challenges in food security and agriculture.