Supporters of Agricultural Research (SoAR) Foundation announced the appointment of Tom Grumbly as president and member of the Foundation’s Board of Directors this week.

ASA is a founding member of the SoAR Foundation, which leads a non-partisan coalition of scientific, consumer and producer groups that work to educate stakeholders about the importance of funding agricultural research, especially the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), the flagship competitively awarded grant program of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). ASA Director Steve Wellman serves on the SoAR board.

Over the course of his 40-year career, Grumbly has held senior leadership positions across government, non-profits and industry. He served in the executive branch of government as Under Secretary in the U.S. Department of Energy and has also held leadership roles in the Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, and the White House Office of Management and Budget. He also worked in the U.S. House of Representatives as staff director for the House Committee on Science and Technology’s subcommittee on investigations.

Grumbly will join SoAR Foundation on Feb. 7, 2015, after leaving his current position with Lockheed Martin, where he serves as Vice President for Civil Government Programs. Under Grumbly’s leadership, SoAR Foundation will explain the importance of expanded funding to bring to agriculture knowledge and technologies from diverse fields such as biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, mathematics, computer science, and meteorology, as well as the importance of a more robust USDA competitive grants portfolio.