Gaetano Scollo is the founder of Living Soil MDV and a dedicated advocate for biologically active, regenerative cultivation systems. With years of hands-on experience in living soil design, worm farming, and soil microbiology, he works with both commercial farms and home growers to build sustainable, reusable soil systems that improve cycle after cycle. His approach focuses on practical application, system design, and long-term soil health.

President & Chief Executive Officer of LPC Naturals

With twenty years’ experience, Jessica Staha has helped technological companies in many different industries focus their efforts and productize their inventions. Her teams have spanned biofuels, medical, cannabis and hemp testing, plant breeding, and CEA technology development and trialing. As a leader with each of these groups she has focused their messaging to introduce their discoveries through publications, patents, and lectures. Today, as our CEO she works with the team to gain adoption of LPC Naturals’ technology throughout the agricultural community.

Daniela Vergara Ph.D. (Indiana University - Bloomington) is the Emerging Crops Specialist with the Harvest New York program. She has extensive experience in teaching and research, mainly in genetics and breeding programs, and will be working statewide with Cornell faculty and staff to promote various emerging crops. Daniela’s past work has focused on hemp production, predominantly in the western United States, with numerous relationships as a consultant with bioscience and agribusiness firms. She is located on the Agritech campus in Geneva to collaborate on work being done in hemp, hops, and other crops.

Waste Management Specialist and Director of the Cornell Waste Management Institute in Soil and Crop Sciences. Jean have spent over 25 years in education of composting food, manure, animal carcasses, and compost quality/use. Her research includes the degradation of pharmaceuticals in mortality and manure and characterizing and developing beneficial uses for organic residuals.

·Jean is also a graduate student in Daniel Buckley's research group. 

Aaron Field a New York–based cannabis cultivator focused on organic living soil systems. Aaron specializes in raised bed production and long-term soil stewardship, designing systems that prioritize root health, biological activity, and repeatable performance cycle after cycle.

At the Living Soil Workshop, Aaron will lead, with Travis Williams, the hands-on session on raised bed construction and maintenance, demonstrating how to build functional soil architecture that supports consistent plant development and scalable production.

​Long time legacy advocate, co founder of the legacy growers association, active in the cannabis industry since 2005. An unapologetically advocate for legacy operators and local growers for fair access and opportunity within the legal reç market in NY State