Kevin Kruse (Chairman), Western Milling
Before Kevin Kruse started Western Milling in late 1999, he was President and Operating Manager of West Coast Grains for PM Ag Products and is President/Stockholder of Kruse Investment Company (KIC). Mr. Kruse joined O. H. Kruse Grain & Milling in 1987 after graduating from California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Agriculture Business. His first assignment with O. H. Kruse was Vice President in charge of production and transportation. In 1989, Mr. Kruse was put in charge of building and developing business for a dairy feed plant in South Central San Joaquin Valley of California. The site of Pixley, California was chosen in early 1990 and construction of the new plant began in October of that year and was in operation within one year. Within four years it was the largest single site feed plant in California. In 1992, Mr. Kruse became President of O. H. Kruse and oversaw operations in California, Arizona, Texas and Idaho producing under the O. H. Kruse Grain & Milling label and in Washington State under the Ferndale label. Total sales of such operations were over $350MM. In 1995, as President of O. H. Kruse Grain & Milling, Mr. Kruse was approached by PM Ag Products and negotiated the sale of the then family run business to them. Under new ownership, Mr. Kruse was involved with integrating the operations of O. H. Kruse with Ferndale Grain. In 1997, he built a state-of-the-art flour mill in Colton, California, and acquired Capitol Flour Milling, which he grew to 9,500cwt/day and sold to Con Agra in 1998. Mr. Kruse then acquired a feed mill and started Western Milling in mid 2000. He remodeled the facility using the latest technology. Western Milling became profitable within the first six months of operation, and today has sales of over $500MM Mr. Kruse became a founding partner in Phoenix Bio Industries in 2004. Phoenix Bio Industries built the first large scale ethanol plant in California in less than 1 ½ years from conception to completion.

Mark L. Noetzel, Cilion
Mark Noetzel joins Cilion from BP plc in London. In 2003, Mr. Noetzel was appointed BP’s Group Vice President with responsibility for retail operations, fuels transport and wholesaling in the US, Europe and Australasia. These businesses have revenues of $65 billion from 28,000 sites in 20 countries. In taking on this role, Mr. Noetzel was asked to transform BP’s market presence into that of a true retailer. Three years on, there has been a dramatic change in BP’s offer to consumers and significant top line growth. He also introduced Ultimate® premium fuels in more than a dozen countries and led the company’s biofuels development efforts. Mr. Noetzel has led major parts of BP’s portfolio for a decade, having been named a Group Vice President in 1996. Previously, he was Group Vice President with responsibility for BP’s Fuels Operations in China, Africa and Australasia, and the aviation businesses, and prior to that in BP and Amoco’s chemical businesses across a broad range of chemical manufacturing and marketing activities. Mr. Noetzel was instrumental in the growth of BP’s chemical business in East Asia where he lived for almost six years. Mr. Noetzel was born in University Heights, Ohio. He holds a BA in international relations/political science from Yale University and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Ejnar Knudsen, Western Milling
Ejnar Knudsen attended California Polytechnic University-San Luis Obispo and Cornell University and graduated from Cornell with a focus in agribusiness and finance. In 1991, Mr. Knudsen joined Rabobank; the world’s largest financial institution focused on the food and agribusiness sectors. He developed an expertise in international finance and managed a high-yield F&A loan portfolio. Later, he became a Vice President in the corporate finance group, where he advised clients on mergers, acquisitions and divestitures. In 1999, Mr. Knudsen was assigned to the Netherlands to review Rabobank's worldwide strategy. Thereafter, his role included formulating Rabobank International's eCommerce strategy. This resulted in Mr. Knudsen becoming Chief Executive Officer of vTraction, a subsidiary of Rabobank formed to implement the eCommerce strategy. In September 2001, Mr. Knudsen joined as a partner in Kruse Investment Company.

Samir Kaul, Khosla Ventures
Samir Kaul attended the University of Michigan where he majored in Biology and taught undergraduate Biochemistry. Mr. Kaul then continued on to graduate school to study Biochemistry at the University of Maryland. From there, he joined Venter's Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), to work on the genome of Arabidopsis thaliana, a mustard seed, which was a model organism for agricultural staples such as rice, corn and wheat. Soon, he was promoted to run the project both within TIGR and internationally as the Chairperson of the Arabidopsis Genome Initiative (AGI).

Mr. Kaul then went to Harvard Business School to pursue an MBA. Upon graduating, he joined Flagship Ventures to start and invest in early stage biotechnology companies. During his five years there, he was involved in starting and investing in a number of companies including Helicos BioSciences, Epitome Biosystems, Codon Devices, LS9 and Morphotek. Helicos, co-founded with Stan Lapidus and Steve Quake from Stanford, has raised nearly $70M in financing to commercialize single molecule sequencing. As CEO for the first 18 months of Codon Devices, Samir raised the Series A Financing, built the technical and advisory team, and booked significant revenues in the company first year of operations. Mr. Kaul left Flagship in 2006 to become a founding general partner at Khosla Ventures focusing on clean technologies and life sciences investing. Since joining Khosla Ventures, he has led the firm’s investments in Altra, Amyris, Cilion, Great Point Energy, Mascoma, Stion and a number of earlier science projects, while maintaining active roles with Codon, Epitome and LS9.

Shai Weiss, Virgin Fuels
Shai Weiss has recently moved to Virgin Fuels from ntl-Telewest, the UK's largest cable operator. At ntl, Mr.Weiss was the Integration Director for the merger between ntl and Telewest and Managing Director of Products, responsible for the development and delivery of internet, telephone and TV for the consumer division and for the Virgin.net broadband ISP. Mr. Weiss was behind the recent merger between Virgin Mobil UK and ntl-Telewest. The Virgin Group is now the largest shareholder in ntl, which will be shortly re-branded Virgin. Mr. Weiss has also held other positions with ntl, including Director of Operations for the ntl Group where he was responsible for major operational and business development projects, joint ventures and relationships with strategic partners as well as Director of Financial Planning for the consumer division. Prior to ntl, Mr. Weiss set up the European office of Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP), an early stage technology venture fund, and was a senior associate with Morgan Stanley's hi-technology mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance team. Mr. Weiss has an MBA from Columbia University in New York and lives in London.

Gerry McConnell, Yucaipa Companies
Gerry McConnell has broad experience in the private equity industry both as a principal and as an investment banker. Mr. McConnell was formerly Senior Managing Director at Heartland Industrial Partners, where his responsibilities included managing capital markets activities and post-investment strategy responsibilities for two portfolio companies. Under Mr. McConnell's management, Heartland Portfolio Companies executed in excess of $11 billion in capital raising activities in over 40 transactions. Prior to joining Heartland, Mr. McConnell was a managing director of leveraged finance and financial sponsor coverage at Deutsche Bank (formerly Bankers Trust Co). Mr. McConnell acted as lead manager on over 50 financing transactions while at Deutsche Bank. Mr. McConnell also had primary coverage responsibility for all idea generation, capital raising and advisory services to a range of leading private equity firms. Mr. McConnell holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Tufts University and a master's of management degree from Northwestern University J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management where he was elected to the Beta Gamma Sigma honorary society for excellence in the study of business.