Saturday, May 23, 2026, marks my 10-year anniversary at Western Growers. Reaching this milestone has given me the chance to reflect on how much has changed over the past decade—both for me personally and for the Western Growers Center for Innovation & Technology in Salinas.

Over those 10 years, the Western Growers Center for Innovation & Technology has experienced remarkable growth. At one point, we hosted as many as 65 agtech startups at one time. Like many innovation ecosystems, we also felt the impact of broader market conditions, including a slowdown during the 2020 pandemic and another dip in 2024 and 2025 as investment funding tightened. Today, we are home to more than 30 agtech startups working on a wide range of solutions to address the challenges facing our grower members.

Four of our founding agtech startups are still members of the WGCIT: Inteligistics, PAGO, HeavyConnect, and GeoVisual Analytics. These long-term relationships show that value of the WGCIT and have allowed us to participate in their successes. It is also worth noting that these four startups are based elsewhere, but they knew they would benefit from an office in “The Salad Bowl of the World” to participate in the specialty crop farming marketplace.

I am especially excited about the startups now working with Reservoir Farms and Plug and Play. Through these partnerships, their agtech companies have access to the WGCIT, which continues to strengthen our role as a hub for innovation and collaboration. One of the things I love most about my work is that no two days are the same. Working with agtech startups means every day brings new ideas, new challenges, and new opportunities to learn.

One of my favorite things about working at Western Growers has been the opportunity to grow within my role. I started in office support, and over time my responsibilities have expanded in ways I could not have anticipated. Today, I work closely with our marketing and membership teams, support accounting-related responsibilities alongside accounts receivable, write articles about startups for Western Grower & Shipper (magazine), submit updates on emerging technologies, and help coordinate professional delegation tours and events. Most recently, I even had the opportunity to attend the gubernatorial debate in Fresno on behalf of Western Growers.

My team has grown and evolved as well. I now report to Walt Duflock, Senior Vice President of Innovation at Western Growers, whose background uniquely bridges agriculture and technology. Walt is a partner in a fifth-generation family farming operation in Monterey County and also brings three decades of experience from Silicon Valley tech startups, including leadership roles in sales and marketing. His experience helped build THRIVE into the leading AgriFoodTech accelerator, and his vision continues to shape the work we do today. Alongside Walt and myself, Ben Palone serves as Director of Commercialization and leads our global harvest automation initiative. Ben has also published case studies that highlight the success of several of our agtech startups, helping tell the story of innovation in action.

For more than half of my time at Western Growers, I also had the privilege of working alongside my dad, Dennis Donohue. He first joined Western Growers as an agtech consultant and later became the full-time director of the WGCIT. Earlier this year, he retired from Western Growers after being elected to serve a second tenure as mayor of Salinas. He previously served as mayor from 2006 to 2012, and with Salinas now home to roughly 175,000 residents, the role requires even more of his time and attention. Being able to share part of my professional journey with him is something I will always value.

Over the course of these 10 years, I have had the pleasure of working with hundreds of agtech startups, many of them international. I have witnessed both the challenges and the triumphs that come with building a company, and it has been a true honor to support their journeys. Looking back, I am deeply grateful for the experiences, the people, and the opportunities that have shaped this decade. I am excited to see what the next chapter will bring for Western Growers, the WGCIT, and the broader agtech community we serve.