Carl Alguire, CEO

Carl leads Smart Gardener with proven ability to build a company's path to profitability with exceptional skills in business development, P&L management, operational excellence, and scalable process improvements. Carl has deep expertise in e-commerce sales, distribution, logistics, quality assurance, and operational process development.

As CEO of the Bernina Supplies Division, he ran four highly diverse companies that surround the creative community with unique and exclusive products, programs, education and inspiration. Carl greatly expanded and diversified the division selling to multiple channels including web/e commerce, wholesale, distribution, and manufacturing. He was instrumental in the start-up and transformation of Peapod from an unprofitable operation into a profitable, highly scalable business that achieved Inc. Magazine's 500 Fast Growth companies list.

As a senior level executive he has conceived, funded, launched and driven seven start-ups to profitability and long term growth. His accomplishments include implementing a complete company wide ERP system that reduced corporate overhead by 20%. Installed inventory demand planning tools that reduced inventory by over 25%, increased turns, and improved fill rates above 95%; reversed 8 years of losses by reducing overhead, implementing all new IT infrastructure, and accelerating web sales.

Carl graduated from Ohio State University with a degree in Horticulture. He currently sits on the Board of the Judson University School of Leadership and Business. For over 25 years, he has been actively involved with Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America.

Kristee Rosendahl, Founder, CPO, Chief Product Officer

Kristee is a design innovator who pioneered the field of User Experience in 1985 as the co-founder of Apple Human Interface Group. From 1986 to 1991 she was one of the principal designers of the Apple Multimedia Lab in San Francisco.

Breaking ground across multiple media platforms and channels since the early days of digital interactivity, Kristee has been instrumental in redefining the role of designer in these new and unchartered fields. She has built and managed teams incorporating the early integration of user experience, creative, engineering, business and marketing.

As a key member on executive management teams for over 26 years, Kristee has brought her vision and unique perspective to product development. Working in the positions of CCO, VP of Product Development, Director, Creative Director, Art Director, Designer and Manager, she has helped both start-ups and respected corporations like Apple, Purple Moon and Harcourt Education develop state-of-the-art models for online community, digital interactivity, revenue generation and branding.

Prior to founding Smart Gardener, Kristee ran her own consulting firm, KR Studio LLC, where she has helped very early stage start-ups with customer strategy, product development, user experience and initial design. Her clients included Microsoft, Cheskin Research, SFMOMA, Playskool, Motorola, and the BBC.

Kristee graduated from Stanford University in 1977 with a BA in Graphic Design and went on to do extended studies at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

Her work has been recognized and honored by the Codie, MC ICON, American Center for Design and the Cindy Gold and Silver Medals. Kristee holds two patents.

Surendra Singhi, CEO and CTO, Kreeti Technologies

Surendra heads our strategic product development partner, as they are completely involved in every aspect of our project. He has more than 15 years of programming experience, cutting across various platforms and environments, in both academia and industry. He has publications in top Machine Learning Conferences: International Conference on Machine Learning ’06 and European Conference on Machine Learning ’05. Surendra has extensive experience working for start-ups, and his team is also a key partner for TasteBook Inc.

Prior to founding Kreeti Technologies, Surendra was a Research and Teaching Assistant at Arizona State University, in the Computer Science Department. He holds a BE in Computer Science from BMS College, Bangalore, and an MS in Computer Science from Arizona State University.

Andrew Beaurline, CFO

Andrew has more than 30 years of financial experience in various capacities including: investment banking, corporate development, venture capital and public accounting.  He presently works as an investment banker with Greene, Holcomb and Fisher (Minneapolis, Atlanta, Seattle, Phoenix and San Francisco).  Previously he was as the senior corporate development officer at Central Garden and Pet and American TonerServ, two publicly traded companies executing rollup strategies in highly fragmented industries:  pet products, pet product distribution, garden supplies and office products/supplies.  Mr. Beaurline also worked in investment banking at Sucsy, Fischer & Co. and in venture capital at the Institutional Venture Capital Fund at the First national Bank of Chicago.  He began his career in public accounting as a CPA with Arthur Andersen & Co.  He is a proven effective leader in all stages of business development: start-up, early-stage, middle-market, and public companies.  Mr. Beaurline earned his BS in Accountancy (with Honors) at the University of Illinois and his MBA with a concentration in business economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Frank Tozer, Gardening Expert and Contributing Editor

Frank is the author of four popular and comprehensive books on organic food gardening, including The Vegetable Growers Handbook, The Organic Gardeners Handbook, The Uses of Wild Plants and the newly published, The New Food Garden. Two of his books have been adapted for the Smart Gardener website.

Frank was born in England, but an interest in wild edible plants brought him to the United States and led him to plant his first vegetable garden in 1981. He has experience gardening in Connecticut, Washington State and in Santa Cruz, California, where he moved to apprentice at the UC Santa Cruz Farm and Garden.

He still lives in the Santa Cruz area, surrounded by the garden he carved out of the woods. His 2-1/2 acre garden is an evolving mix of English cottage garden, edible landscape, forest garden, French intensive vegetable garden, native plants and encroaching forest and it is the source for much of the material he writes about in his books.

Board of Advisors

Lesley Mansford, CEO, Digital Games and Distribution Expert

CEO at NeoEdge, co-founder Pogo.com, 16 years with EA, and EA’s VP of digital distribution.

Christopher Ireland, Business Founder, Market Research Expert

Former CEO/Partner at Cheskin, expert in consumer trends with a focus on consumer-driven technology.

Carl Rosendahl, Business Founder, Digital Animation Innovator

Former Founder/CEO at Pacific Data Images (PDI), former Managing Director, Mobius Venture Capital.

Susan Shields, Marketing, Brand & Product Expert for Food Industry

Senior VP and CMO for Jamba Juice Company, former group Vice President of Innovation at Safeway.

Brete Harrison, Business Founder, Culinary Publishing

Founding Chairman and CEO of the Culinary Society of America, best-selling publisher, editor and writer.

Webficient

Webficient is a USA-based network of professional consultants, developers, and designers who build high quality software solutions. We apply agile development strategies and leverage open source frameworks and cloud-based computing to deliver competitive platforms for businesses of all stages.

Matthew Melone, Marketing Associate

Matt is a former U.S. Army infantry and intelligence officer turned Rails web developer and tech marketer. His military experience includes combat leadership, operations management and heading a DIA-classified intelligence center. He developed a passion for sustainability, gardening and nutrition shortly after serving in the arid, rural neighborhoods of Iraq, and he acts as an advisor to young gardeners at the Hananasif Secondary School in Tanzania. Matt is currently an MBA student at UC-Berkeley specializing in marketing and technology.

Professional Organic Food Gardener in Chicagoland area

We are currently looking for experienced, enthusiastic, and self-motivated organic garden managers. Smart Gardener Backyard is a multi-sided technology platform that connects inexperienced, fresh food enthusiasts with landscaping professionals that possess the expertise and resources to plan, build, manage, maintain, and harvest organic food gardens.  

SmartGardener.com, our DIY website, was established in 2012 and now has over 185,000 users. We are now one of the most popular garden-planning websites in the country. After realizing that a substantial portion of our users want direct help with their vegetable gardens, we created Smart Backyard (SmartBackyard.com) which connects inexperienced, fresh food enthusiasts with landscaping partners trained on our platform. Our goal is to connect experienced, enthusiastic, and self-motivated organic garden managers with our landscaping partners. This is a unique opportunity to create, define, and manage an organic gardening division within an established landscaping company. Our partners are looking for select individuals to help us grow this area of their business.

The candidate must be experienced and have a strong working knowledge in vegetable plant care and maintenance. Additional skills include companion and succession planting knowledge, organic pest and disease care and treatment, watering requirements, and plant stabilization methods including trellising, fencing, staking and more. 

You must have a good working knowledge of computers and be able to learn and execute on our proprietary software used in the commission of the work. 

The ideal candidate will also be able to interact with customers, sell our partners services, and expand the services offered with new and old clients. Our partners will have a presence at local events (i.e. Farmer’s markets and sustainability themed events) where you would be expected to represent the company and its services. 

This is physical outdoor work and includes some heavy lifting.

Additional skills that are useful include experience with greenhouses, cold frames, hoop houses, chickens, and hive bee culture. 

We will consider full-time, part-time, and seasonal applications. Compensation is $13/hr-$20/hr depending on experience, but compensation, hours, and responsibility will be negotiated with our partners. Our partners are looking for an entrepreneurial individual to create and manage an organic food production division within their business. Our partners are primarily suburban and dispersed all over the Chicago land area. 

Send your resume and cover letter to gardengrowingjobs@gmail.com. Applications are being accepted on a rolling basis. Please include your location. If it’s a good fit we will connect you with a partner in your geographic area. 

Thanks for your time and consideration. 

Peace and Carrots,

The Smart Gardener Team