IMPOSSIBLE FOODS - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Business Leader
- SVP, NA Sales
Dan Greene is an accomplished business leader with a talent for growing and scaling organizations and helping his teams quickly achieve strong business results. Over the course of his professional career, he has held a variety of operational revenue-driving roles from early-stage startups to established Fortune 500 companies.
Prior to joining Impossible, Dan served as the Chief Revenue Officer for an artificial intelligence startup, as well as an executive consultant with other early-stage software companies. Prior to that, Dan spent 10 years leading large teams and revenue-generating business units at Google and Twitter.
Before Google, Dan graduated from The United States Naval Academy and served over 11 years as a Navy fighter pilot and director of operations for multiple aviation units. He left active duty in 2004 and earned his MBA at the University of California Los Angeles while starting his civilian career in the commercial aviation business.
Dan resides in Willow Glen, CA with his wife, Karen, his three kids, and his yellow lab Scout.
David Borecky is the Chief Financial Officer at Impossible Foods. He joined the company in 2019 as Chief Accounting Officer and was promoted to CFO in 2021 after serving for six months as interim CFO. He leads the accounting, strategic finance, financial planning and analysis, treasury, investor relations, internal audit, tax, and information technology functions. David helps drive strategic planning and decision making while continually assessing risks and opportunities for the organization.
From 2016 to 2019, David was the Controller for Stripe, where he scaled and managed various accounting, finance, and treasury functions. Prior to that, David held multiple senior management positions at mobile payments provider Square, where he built out the company's global finance and accounting operations and worked alongside executives to successfully lead Square's IPO registration process. He was also responsible for sourcing, executing, and integrating strategic acquisitions. Prior to Square, David held leadership roles in treasury and finance at OpenText Corp., a global leader in enterprise information management and Canada's largest publicly traded software company.
David holds an honors degree in business from Wilfrid Laurier University and a Masters degree from the Schulich School of Business at York University. He is a Canadian Chartered Accountant and a U.S. Certified Public Accountant.
Job Titles:
- Senior Vice President of Risk and Safety
George McCloskey is the SVP of Risk and Safety at Impossible Foods and leads the Enterprise Risk Management, Business Continuity & Resilience, Global Security, and Environmental Health and Safety teams.
Prior to Impossible Foods, George was the Chief Security Officer at Stripe, Inc. helping to build economic infrastructure for the internet. Prior to Stripe, George was the Chief Security Officer and Head of Trust and Safety at Square, Inc., a global payments and financial services company located in San Francisco, CA.
Before Square, George was the Chief Security Officer at Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, California. Pixar's culture helped develop the values of trust, creativity, and collaboration that have become a roadmap for leadership and program development in building high functioning teams that serve and provide value to the organization.
George has also had a distinguished law enforcement career, having served a combined 26 years at the local and federal level. He is a graduate of the FBI National Executive Academy, and serves various organizations in conservation and philanthropy.
George is a Certified Protection Professional (CPP) through ASIS International and a member of the International Security Management Association (ISMA) where he serves on the Board of Directors and as Treasurer of the Executive Committee. He is also a Certified Business Continuity Professional (CBCP) and a graduate of St. Mary's College of California.
Jason Gao - Chief Legal Officer, Secretary
Job Titles:
- Chief Legal Officer
- Corporate Secretary
Jason Gao is the Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary at Impossible Foods. He oversees the company's legal, regulatory, quality, and safety & security functions.
Jason was previously the SVP, Deputy General Counsel of the company - covering corporate matters, including corporate governance, equity administration, employment, legal operations, and M&A.
Jason joined the company in 2018, after working for three years as the Corporate & Securities Counsel Lead, Assistant Secretary at Square Inc., where he scaled the team from before its IPO through its first several years as a public company. At Square, he focused on board matters, public company oversight and disclosures, legal issues related to equity and compensation, and corporate financings.
Prior to his role at Square, he was a Counsel at O'Melveny & Myers LLP in San Francisco and an Associate at Shearman and Sterling LLP in New York, where he worked on large strategic financings, and helped over a dozen companies go public.
Jason holds a B.S. from The Pennsylvania State University and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Jason serves on the boards of the many international subsidiaries of Impossible Foods, and resides on the San Francisco Peninsula with his wife Chloe and their miniature schnauzer Coffee.
Job Titles:
- Chief Information Officer
- in 2018 As the Vice President of Information Technology
Kate Aydin is the Chief Information Officer at Impossible Foods, where she oversees the business technology, data engineering, information security, and IT operations and governance functions. Her focus is on providing strategic and operational leadership, and ensuring that all technology offerings are working in synergy with the overarching business plan and objectives. She also leads the implementation of the company's long term vision by continuing to build a well-defined roadmap that is scalable, secure, resilient and growth-oriented.
Kate joined Impossible Foods in 2018 as the Vice President of Information Technology, and built the Information Technology function from the ground up. Before Impossible Foods, she gained 25 years of experience in the Information Technology space with a focus on leading business transformation programs for high-growth, complex, and fast-paced organizations. She worked as a consultant independently and as part of the Capgemini team, and also served in senior leadership roles for Clorox and Stryker.
Kate has a certification in Organizational Leadership from Harvard Business School, an MBA from Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business, and a Bachelor's of Science in Industrial Engineering from Bogazici University in Istanbul. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, two kids, and two pets.
Leilani Gayles joined Impossible Foods in August 2021 as Chief People Officer. She oversees Impossible's people operations - including talent acquisition, compensation and rewards, talent and leadership development, diversity, equity and inclusion, and strategic people initiatives - all to support the company's commitment to creating the best work experience for all employees.
Gayles joined the company after a decade at the San Francisco Giants, where she served as Senior Vice President and Chief People Officer. At the Giants, Leilani developed performance-based compensation systems, management and leadership development programs and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, all of which contributed to building unparalleled business operations, on and off the field.
Prior to her role with the Giants, Gayles worked in the human resources field in various environments, ranging from hyper-growth Excite@Home to large technology companies including Hewlett Packard and Silicon Graphics. She has focused her career on helping organizations achieve scale while creating a highly engaging and productive workplace where employees can do the best work of their careers.
Gayles holds a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in organizational behavior from the University of San Francisco. She is a senior fellow serving the Silicon Valley chapter of the American Leadership Forum, a network of regional leaders committed to serving the common good. A San Francisco native, Leilani lives on the Peninsula with her family of five.
Patrick O. Brown is the founder of Impossible Foods, a company at the forefront of making nutritious, delicious meat and dairy products from plants to satisfy meat lovers and address the environmental impact of animal farming.
The idea for Impossible Foods came to Pat while he was on sabbatical from his position as an HHMI investigator and professor of biochemistry at the Stanford University School of Medicine. In reflecting on how he could use his training and experience to make the largest positive impact on the world, he realized there was a way to make delicious, affordable meat and dairy products, directly from plants - that would be better for the environment and for consumers. In 2011, Pat chose to devote himself full time to Impossible Foods.
After receiving his BA, MD and PhD (in Biochemistry) at the University of Chicago, Pat completed a residency in pediatrics at Chicago's Children's Memorial Hospital. As a fellow with Mike Bishop and Harold Varmus, he defined the mechanism by which HIV and other retroviruses incorporate their genes into the genomes of the cells they infect.
At Stanford, Pat and colleagues developed DNA microarrays - a new technology that made it possible to monitor the activity of all the genes in a genome - along with the first methods for analyzing, visualizing and interpreting global gene expression programs.
He pioneered the use of gene expression patterns to classify cancers and improve prediction of their clinical course. He has also been a leader in making scientific and medical research results freely available to scientists, physicians and the public. With Harold Varmus, then Director of the National Institutes of Health, and Berkeley professor Michael Eisen, he founded the Public Library of Science, a nonprofit scientific publisher that has transformed the publishing industry by making scientific and medical research results freely available to the public.
He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine and recipient of the American Cancer Society Medal of Honor. He is also the co-founder of Lyrical Foods, Inc., maker of Kite Hill artisanal nut-milk-based cheeses and yogurts.
Peter McGuinness is the CEO of Impossible Foods, a tech-enabled food company that makes delicious meat from plants, with a fraction of the environmental impact compared to animal meat. Peter joined Impossible in April 2022 to lead its next phase of global growth and help shape the food habits of people around the world.
Peter brings more than 30 years of consumer expertise to the position, most recently as President and Chief Operating Officer of Chobani, where he scaled operations, expanded the business into new categories including oat milk, and helped build the company into an iconic brand. In his nine years at Chobani, he also served as Chief Marketing and Brand Officer and Chief Commercial Officer, where he created a demand department and led all global marketing, corporate communication, advertising, innovation and sales efforts for the brand.
Prior to Chobani, Peter served as President and CEO of advertising agencies DDB Chicago and Gotham, where he succeeded in transforming and restoring the agencies following periods of decline. Prior to that, he held various roles at IPG marketing company Momentum Worldwide, including serving as its Regional President of Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Global Director of Consumer Activation, with operations in 45 offices spanning 25 countries. Prior to Momentum, he served as an EVP and Worldwide Account Director of McCann Erickson worldwide.
Sue Klapholz, M.D., Ph.D, is VP of Nutrition and Health at Impossible Foods. She is also on the board of directors of our sister company, Lyrical Foods. Sue holds five patents and brings a wealth of experience from her diverse career as a scientist, doctor, teacher, editor and writer.
Before joining Impossible Foods in 2013, Sue was a senior scientist at Cell Genesys, where she established a large DNA cloning lab and led the team that cloned the megabase-sized human immunoglobulin genes in yeast, among other projects. Sue also taught a professional course in cloning and analysis of large DNA molecules at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY, and was a lecturer on genetics and evolution at The University of Chicago.
Sue was a resident physician in the Department of Psychiatry at The University of California, San Francisco. She was also a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biochemistry at Stanford University, where she worked on cloning a gene responsible for manic-depression, and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biology at The University of Chicago, focusing on the genetic control of recombination and chromosome segregation during meiosis in yeast. Sue has an M.D. from The University of Illinois College of Medicine and a Ph.D. in genetics from The University of Chicago. She has volunteered with a variety of organizations, including the Stanford Health Library, the Palo Alto Children's Theater and the Palo Alto Humane Society.