Steele Lorenz
CEO
Steele Lorenz has spent nearly his entire career empowering farmers to be more profitable on their lands while consuming fewer resources. He has been the CEO of Gradable, which he founded within Farmers Business Network (FBN) in 2020, since its spinout in 2024. Lorenz spent six years at FBN running both the sustainability business and the strategy and operations function. Before FBN, Lorenz spent eight years building MyRain, a social venture focused on distributing efficient irrigation equipment to smallholding farmers in south India that boosted both yields and water security. He has delivered drip irrigation to more than 8,000 farmers and the business continues to serve growers in the region today. Lorenz has a BSB in Entrepreneurship and Marketing from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management and an MBA from the University of California Berkeley Haas.
Brant Caley
Director, Product Management
Brant Caley grew up on a corn and soybean farm in Markle, Indiana, and has spent the last 15+ years working in agricultural technology. He leads product at Gradable and helps build tools that farmers, grain buyers, and originators rely on to move grain, manage contracts, and run sustainability programs.
Rebecca Willison
Director, Software Engineering
Rebecca Willison leads a team of software engineers and data scientists at Gradable, building the technology platform that connects farmers, grain buyers, and agribusinesses across the supply chain. She brings over a decade of experience scaling technical teams and shipping data-driven products at the intersection of agriculture and software, with prior roles at The Climate Corporation and Monsanto. Rebecca grew up on a family farm raising turkeys and Angus cattle, and holds an MA in Statistics from the University of Missouri.
Kurt Alles
Director, Sustainable Business
Kurt Alles has more than a decade of experience building agriculture technology businesses. In his current role, he leads Gradable Sustainability, which facilitates program design, data collection, and environmental scoring for more than 5,000 farmers and almost 10M unique acres. Farmers in Gradable programs earn over $30M in annual incentives for practices like cover cropping, no-till, and nitrogen efficiency for end markets across food, feed, and fuel. Prior to Gradable, Kurt started a crop insurance business, helped build Farmers Business Network’s Direct platform, and serviced dairy farmers at Farmeron. He holds a BA in Environmental Policy from Middlebury College and is a Venture for America Fellow.
Elliott Brammer
Director of Business Development
Elliott Brammer is Director of Business Development for Gradable. At Gradable, he works with the Financial Services, Sustainability, and Tech teams to bring solutions to a variety of customers across the biofuels and food industries. Before joining Gradable he worked at ADM for 28 years across the Ag Services and Oilseeds, Carbohydrate Solutions and Nutrition business units in North and South America. He has held roles managing agricultural commodity trading risk, ethanol trading and product line management; his most recent role was Senior Trading Manager. Elliott is located in Decatur, IL and graduated from Western Illinois University with a B.S. in Ag Business and from Millikin University with his MBA.
Ryan Darnell
Director, Gradable Financial Services
Ryan Darnell has seventeen years of experience managing complex financial risks. He began his career at Deutsche Bank where he ultimately led the agricultural derivatives trading desk. After seven years at Deutsche Bank, he joined the TrailStone Group to co-manage a private equity and asset hedging portfolio. Most recently, Mr. Darnell served on the management team of StoneX Commodity Solutions, where he worked to provide financing and risk management solutions across the commodity supply chain, and founded Senecal Capital, a private investment fund. He is passionate about financial literacy and education and has taught options pricing and risk management seminars for numerous audiences across the country. He received his AB with High Honors in Economics from Harvard College.
