Marie Connett

Portfolio Lead, Agricultural Productivity Technology

Seattle

Prior to teaming with Global Good, Marie was the CEO of an NGO active in sustainable agriculture and climate change mitigation in Africa, India and the Americas. She was also the national R&D Manager for Elders in Australia, the Food Security Theme Lead at National ICT Australia with a portfolio including agriculture, water and renewable energy resources, and before that, Deputy CEO of Cambia, an NGO in which she led the team that launched the public-good website Patent Lens, biological sequence search tools, status and family information, and expansion from a U.S. agriculture database to all patent categories and multiple jurisdictions, for enablement of inventors and development organizations to compile landscapes from public disclosures. Marie is an inventor on more than 80 patents and patents pending. She has co-owned and consulted for SME businesses in three countries, and worked in private industry leading several research groups, including one that pioneered the only scalable techniques for important species in an area of forestry technology. She earned a PhD in Plant Sciences (Cornell University), an MBA (USC) and two bachelor’s degrees with honors, in Biology and in Modern Languages (Humboldt State University and Universität Heidelberg), and registrations as a patent agent, professional forester, and IT project manager. She is an adjunct Professor at the University of Western Australia and a Fellow of the University of Melbourne.