A West Concord-based company that helps retail companies reduce their food waste has filled eight new executive leadership roles.
Divert Inc. says it's investing in its future by bringing on new leaders across the company, including in finance, strategy, marketing and product. The company is also planning to grow its tech team fivefold over the next year, according to co-founder and CEO Ryan Begin.
Since its founding in 2007, Begin said the company has focused on working with grocery stores to reduce food waste, both for the environment and its customers’ bottom lines. Divert has a data-driven approach, Begin said, which includes using its IoT platform of hardware, sensors and algorithms to track food waste.
“Landfills are used prolifically. We have 20 years of landfill capacity left in the U.S. and we need to do something. It’s either build more landfills or better manage our resources,” Begin said.
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Divert has customers down the East and West Coast, including Stop & Shop and Target in Massachusetts, and the upper Midwest.
The company also collects food waste that it has tracked through its IoT platform from retailers and uses it in Divert’s anaerobic digesters. Within the digesters, bacteria consume the carbon dioxide from the food and leave behind methane, which is considered a “renewable natural gas” by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center.
Divert has two of these facilities in Freetown, Massachusetts, and Los Angeles. The company is building three facilities in the Pacific Northwest, Northern California and the Pennsylvania region, Begin said.
Begin said this accelerated growth and team expansion over the last six to nine months followed a round of funding and Divert’s acquisition by Ara Partners. The company declined to share the funding amount. Divert previously raised around $3.8 million of equity funding in 2018, according to an SEC filing.
Divert's growth plans
The executive hires are all in newly created positions and are already thinking about how the company can successfully grow, Begin said.
“We are already working on our next wave and the wave behind that. So this team is already assembled and thinking three, four, five years out,” Begin said. “It is a blitzscale.”
Divert has over 200 employees with about 50 located in Massachusetts, Begin said. The goal is to grow its tech team within the next 12 months.
“We are identifying new opportunities. Ways to reduce the carbon intensity of our facilities. Ways to eliminate wasted food,” Begin said. “How do you scale this technology? How do you integrate technology? How do we bring these solutions beyond retail? We’re working on all these things right now.”
Divert’s new leaders are:
- Tom Abraham is the vice president of product strategy. He has nearly a decade of experience in product development in areas like life sciences, financial services, retail and manufacturing.
- Matt Andrus will serve as vice president of legal after leaving TJX Companies, where he was assistant vice president director and senior attorney.
- Craig Davis will oversee development for Divert. Most recently, Davis was CEO and president at Melink Corp.
- David Eichinger is Divert’s first chief financial officer. He has previously held roles at Exxon, General Motors and SES. Eichinger also founded and served as CFO of G2X Energy.
- Hilary Keates will serve as the company’s new chief marketing officer. She has worked at P&G, New Balance, Citibank and Indigo Agriculture.
- Ryan Rebholz joined the company as vice president of operations. Rebholz has more than 20 years of manufacturing leadership experience. He has held positions at Barnes Group Inc. and The AZEK Company.
- Lauren Romansky was named head of people. Before joining Divert, Romansky led research and advisory in Gartner’s HR practice for almost 10 years.
- Chris Thomas is the new vice president of public affairs. Thomas joins Divert from Lyft’s public policy team where he led a negotiated legislative deal between gig companies, legislators and organized labor.
