Thea Pease

 Practice Director

Thea originally joined RIG as an Engagement Director in February 2021 and now leads the AgriFood and Industrial Biotech practices

Thea has spent 6 years working in and around agriculture, food and sustainability. In her last year of studying French, Spanish and Mandarin at the University of Exeter, she co-ran The Biosmart Initiative, working to explore carbon sequestration and clean fuel opportunities with biochar in Ethiopia. Following a post-grad in Social Innovation Management at the Amani Institute in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Thea worked briefly with Mustard Seed, a social impact VC, before joining Wefarm, the world’s largest platform for small-scale farmers.

She spent over 4 years at Wefarm, working with over 2m farmers across Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, and eventually leading sales and business development as part of Wefarm’s Senior Leadership Team. Thea also launched Wefarm’s Marketplace, which generated $29m in sales of agricultural inputs in 3 years, and secured partnerships with a range of agricultural input companies, multi-nationals and F&B companies.

Thea is a people-focused operator and passionate about supporting the early-stage growth of globally ambitious startups who create triple bottom line impact (people, planet and profit).

A French and Spanish speaker, with rusty Portuguese and extremely rusty Swahili and Mandarin, Thea enjoys travel, is a keen yogi and reader, and one day hopes to finish writing the novel she started 4 years ago, and never quite gets around to completing.