Mr. Payne was the founder of Compassion-First Pet Hospitals, and served as President and CEO from 2014 until 2020. Compassion-First Pet Hospitals, now NVA Compassion-First, is a family of specialty and emergency veterinary hospitals located throughout the United States that is dedicated to changing the veterinary landscape and elevating patient outcomes. Mr. Payne currently serves as Vice Chairman of National Veterinary Associates, with which Compassion-First Pet Hospitals combined. Prior to founding Compassion-First, Mr. Payne served as a member of the Global Leadership Team for Mars Pet Care. He also served as President and CEO of Banfield Pet Hospitals and as President and General Manager of Bayer Healthcare’s North American Animal Health Division.

Mr. Payne currently serves as Chairman of the Board for American Humane and as Vice Chairman of the Board of Regents at Ross University School of Medicine and School of Veterinary Medicine. He served on the Board of Directors of Nexvet, a bioscience company located in Dublin, Ireland, through the company’s acquisition by Zoetis in 2018.

Keith Marchiando has 25 years of experience leading finance organizations of manufacturing and technology companies. He possesses a deep functional experience and technical knowledge in all aspects of corporate finance, financial planning, and accounting. He brings broad experience in a number of industries and company sizes and has extensive experience in information technology and human resources as well. Mr. Marchiando joined ZIVO Bioscience, Inc. from New US Nonwovens, LLC, a contract manufacturer of personal care and home care products, where he was Chief Financial Officer. At US Nonwovens, he was responsible for all aspects of the company’s financial activities, including strengthening corporate controls, implementing financial planning and developing the Company’s IT strategy. Prior to Nonwovens, he had similar responsibilities in finance-related roles at multiple private and public companies. Mr. Marchiando earned a master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) in corporate finance from Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Management and an undergraduate degree in finance and economics at Lehigh University. Mr. Marchiando is a member of Financial Executives International and enjoys photography and cooking in his spare time.

Mr. Pfund brings more than 30 years of technical and operational leadership experience in FDA-regulated companies to his role as Vice-President, Research & Development at ZIVO Bioscience, Inc., including more than 18 years at Pfizer (legacy Upjohn) where he held numerous positions spanning the entire drug discovery and development continuum. He brings a wealth of technical expertise, process control and managerial experience to the Company that will help drive value. Following his tenure at Pfizer, Mr. Pfund served as the Vice President, Product Development for RealBio Technology, Inc., an emerging research tools company, and held Director-level positions at several leading contract research organizations including Eurofins, Covance and NAMSA. Mr. Pfund earned a B.S. (Biology) from the State University of New York, College at Oswego, and a M.S. (Microbiology) from The Ohio State University.

Amy Elizabeth Steffek, Ph.D., serves as the Company’s Director of Research & Development. She earned a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Michigan in 2007 and completed fellowships in Translational Medicine and Neuroendocrinology at the University of Michigan in 2010. Dr. Steffek has over 13 years of scientific research experience spanning neurology, cardiology, oncology, psychiatry, and endocrinology. As a consultant, she has helped companies develop pharmaceutical products, medical devices, medical IT products, and pre-clinical research services.

Dr. Miller has nearly 15 years experience in cleantech, agtech, and biotech industries and continues to be dedicated to developing environmentally responsible technologies and sustainable products. As Vice President of Technology and Global Supply at Zivo Bioscience Inc, he is responsible for ZIVO’s algae SuperFarm engineering and for managing a global supply chain to grow ZIVO’s proprietary algal strain and produce quality product. Before joining ZIVO, he was Director of Manufacturing at Global Thermostat, LLC, and managed an engineering project to deliver a first-of-its-kind CO₂ direct air capture plant. Prior, he was Senior Director of Technology at Algenol Biotech LLC, where he headed project management, technical development of advanced photobioreactor systems, product development of color additives and proteins derived from algae, and commercial facility engineering. In academia, Dr. Miller studied algae production and the functional role of aquatic plants in marine and aquatic ecosystems. He received his Ph.D. in Marine Sciences from the University of Texas (Austin) Marine Science Institute, after which he served as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Georgia. He also holds a M.S. in Plant Sciences from University of Massachusetts, Amherst and a B.A. in Biology from Trinity College.

In her Senior Scientist role, Dr. Laura Belicka brings 9 years of research and development experience in the algae biotechnology industry. A marine scientist by training, Laura was formerly a research scientist at Algenol Biotech, where she led outdoor-scale algae cultivation optimization experiments that focused on nutrient uptake, gas management, contamination control, and culture stability. She also served cross-functional roles bridging biology and engineering in the realms of photobioreactor design and algae cultivation system deployment. Prior to Algenol, Laura’s academic research concentrated around the use of lipid biomarkers to track algal and other organic carbon sources through estuarine and oceanic environments. Laura received both her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Marine, Estuarine, and Environmental Sciences from the University of Maryland at College Park and holds a B.S. in Geosciences with a Marine Science minor from the Pennsylvania State University.