Jacqueline Heard

Jacqueline Heard, PhD, MBA is an industry entrepreneur, global R&D leader, and venture investor who has centered her career around the support of agricultural innovation by identifying and commercializing new technology.

Jacqueline most recently co-founded and led Enko Chem, Inc. as its CEO in its work to revolutionize and transform the crop protection industry by solving for a key challenge: developing sustainable chemistries more efficiently using a target-based approach augmented with artificial intelligence. Prior to leading Enko, Jacqueline served as CEO at the Two Blades Foundation, in key executive leadership roles at CiBO Technologies and Flagship Pioneering, Mendel Biotechnology, and led global R&D and investments at Monsanto. She has also served as an active board member for her portfolio companies and forged new open innovation structures for the industry by creating new companies using capital efficient, semi-virtual models.

A champion for change in world food security, sustainability, and women empowerment, Jacqueline has also had prominent advisory and directorship roles, such as being a Director at Sollum Technologies Inc, Meiogenix Inc and GenXTraits, a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Keystone Symposia; a Board Director and member of the Scientific Advisory Board at the Boyce Thompson Institute at Cornell University; a Tech Pioneer with the World Economic Forum; a member of the Food Innovation Network within the World Economic Forum’s Global Innovators community; and, now a participant on the Fast Company Impact Counsel.

Jacqueline earned a Ph.D. in Biology from Boston College and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. She has over 100 peer reviewed publications and issued patents and was recently honored in Forbes 2024 “50 Over 50” as a featured innovator, and in Hartford Business Journal’s “2024 Power 50” and “Top 25 Women in Business.”