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Kathryn Schanen Kissam

Director, Corporate Marketing & Corporate Citizenship
Monsanto Company

Kathryn Schanen Kissam is Director, Corporate Marketing and Corporate Citizenship at Monsanto Company and is a member of the Monsanto Leadership Team, the senior operating team of the company.
In this capacity, Kathryn and her team develop strategies and implementation plans to achieve Monsanto's vision of global marketplace acceptance and approvals of agricultural biotechnology products and technologies. These efforts include initiatives such as elevating the visibility of the benefits of biotechnology, establishing industry public education efforts, and global stakeholder outreach. Kathryn also leads Monsanto's global corporate identity and branding efforts and the company's corporate citizenship team.

She joined Monsanto in 1990, holding various sales, marketing and manufacturing positions of increasing responsibility within the nylon fiber business. She served three years as Special Projects Assistant to the chairman/CEO, Robert B. Shapiro and as Chief-of-Staff for Monsanto's CEO Hendrik Verfaillie. Kathryn received an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin in 1990, and a B.S. in Marketing from the University of South Carolina in 1988.

Kathryn is a Monsanto Trustee for the Marketing Science Institute and serves on the board of several organizations including the Monsanto Fund, The Missouri Historical Society, and the International Rett Syndrome Association. She is on the Advisory Board of The Nidus Center for Scientific Enterprise and leads the St. Louis BioBelt Marketing Task Force. She is a guest lecturer at the Haas School of Business and a frequent speaker at global marketing and branding conferences.

Kathryn is married and has three wonderful sons, Cole (3), Henry (1) and Griffin (infant).