Agriculture 2024: MATTHEW RYAN

In June, Rockingham-based Soli Organic made headlines when it opened what may be the world’s largest indoor organic farm in San Antonio, Texas, nurturing 200,000 herb plants a week in its 140,000-square-foot facility. It’s all in a day’s work for the high-tech, soil-based indoor vertical farming company that previously was known as Shenandoah Growers before a 2021 rebranding.

The Harvard-educated Ryan, Soli’s CEO since 2021, told Virginia Business in fall 2023 that his company holds a 50% market share nationally in potted herbs, selling organic herbs and greens in more than 20,000 grocery stores nationally. The company, which has about 300 of its 750 workers in Virginia, has been expanding its national footprint with the help of $125 million in venture funding that it secured in 2022.

Before Soli, Ryan served as head of brand management for Walt Disney and chief marketing officer and chief strategy officer for Starbucks. Ryan has served on the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals’ board of directors since January 2020. In February, he joined the board of Dine Brands Global, a publicly traded food and beverage company that owns restaurant brands Applebee’s and International House of Pancakes.