Sheilah Oltmans-Deardorff

Sheilah Oltmans-Deardorff has extensive experience in the agricultural industry. Sheilah began their career at Iowa State University as a Graduate Research Assistant, where they participated in various aspects of a soybean cultivar development program. Sheilah then joined Galena Genetics as a Research Director, focusing on developing food grade soybean varieties and collaborating with public breeding programs.

In 2006, Sheilah joined Monsanto Company, where they held multiple roles over the years. Sheilah initially worked as a Soy Trait Integration Research Associate, managing soy trait integration workflows and initiating Ph.D. studies. Sheilah later became a Soy Trait Integration Breeder, collaborating with various teams to deliver a new soy trait integration workflow and conducting molecular marker lab work. Sheilah then transitioned to a role as a Trait and Field Solutions Discovery Scientist, where they designed experiments to optimize the soy breeding traited pipeline. Sheilah was also a NeXT Insights Lead, responsible for insights and analytics in global breeding. Finally, they served as the Data and Process Optimization Lead for Global Breeding, where they focused on building visualizations and delivering planting strategies for precision product placement recommendations.

Since 2018, Sheilah has been working at Bayer Crop Science as the Head of Global Pipeline Optimization in Field Solutions. Their responsibilities include innovation deployment and optimization to centralize and standardize seed processing, packaging, and inventory management across crops in North America, as part of the Breeding 3.0 transformation.

Sheilah Oltmans-Deardorff completed their education in a chronological manner. From 1998 to 2003, they attended Iowa State University where they obtained a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in Agricultural Education-communications option. Following this, they pursued higher studies at the same university from 2003 to 2004, earning a Master of Science (MS) degree in Plant Breeding. Sheilah further advanced their education by pursuing a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in Plant Breeding from Iowa State University, which they completed from 2008 to 2012.