Our Team
Marcelo Antunes de Siqueira M.Ag.
Founding Partner
Marcelo is a seasoned entrepreneur and executive of the Cannabis, horticulture and plant biotechnology sector. Bringing to the team over 25 years of experience in the ornamental plant sector and in the Cannabis industry, Marcelo is a critical and creative thinker with a solid reputation for his technical know-how in large scale precision agriculture, team building, strategic planning, project management, work ethic, and for cross-cultural and multilingual communication skills in the work place.
Marcelo was invited to be a part of the founding team of PharmaCielo in early 2015. PharmaCielo is a Canadian based, publicly traded LP which led the Cannabis legalization efforts in Colombia, earned historic first licenses and operates large scale production facilities in South America. From 2015 to 2020, he lead the teams of virtually all key operational processes in the company-from licensing, through agricultural systems design and extraction plant operation. As vice-president of agriculture, Marcelo designed and implemented one of the largest and most complete cannabis agribusiness in Latin America. The division grew from 2 to 250 employees in 4 years and today it counts with a premier breeding program, the most modern tissue-culture laboratory in Latin America exclusively dedicated to Cannabis, and a tropical agricultural production facility with more than 12 hectares of biologically managed cannabis production.
His technical expertise in the cannabis industry also comes from having led the implementation and operation of a state-of-the-art analytical laboratory equipped with multiple HPCL-MS and GC-MS chromatographers to test for potency, terpenes and residual contaminants in Cannabis. Marcelo has also led cannabis extraction teams responsible for CO2 extraction, Ethanol extraction, downstream purification and THC remediation.
Previous to his full-time Cannabis career, Marcelo co-founded and managed Altria Lab-Plants LLC, a US based horticultural company focused of the breeding, in-vitro propagation and distribution of orchid and bromeliad plantlets world-wide. During these years he sharpened his knowledge of precision agriculture, tissue-culture clean stock production, and greenhouse construction and operations. Marcelo supported customer´s technical needs in Brazil, Colombia, Central America, in the United States and in The Netherlands.
Marcelo has earned his Master´s Degree in Horticulture from The University of Florida, and his Bachelor´s degree in agronomy and biology from Wilmington College. He resides in Medellin, Colombia and he speaks 2 languages in addition to his native Portuguese - English and Spanish.
Elio Jimenez Ph.D.
Founding Partner
Dr. Jimenez is a highly experienced plant biotechnologist with a long career in academic and industrial research. His research activities have been focused on the development of plant tissue culture protocols, plant propagation, plant breeding and the production of plant secondary metabolites by cell and tissue cultures. His expertise in plant biotechnology has been applied to a variety of crop, ornamental and medicinal plants.
Dr. Jiménez has been scientific advisor and consultant for the design and setting up of commercial tissue culture laboratories; by using both conventional tissue culture techniques, and advanced bioreactor technology. He leaded research teams; and is skilled on grant writing, project implementation and project management. He has the sense to build up partnerships and collaborative research activities.
Graduated as Agronomy Engineer with a Ph.D. in Agriculture, Dr. Jimenez was research scientist and professor at Universidad Central de Las Villas, Cuba. Later, associate professor at the University of Florida, before joining Florida Crystals Corporation where he currently leads the disease-free seed production and precision planting technology programs. Dr. Jimenez has published more than seventy scientific papers in peer reviewed journals and contributed to book chapters. He lectured under-graduate and graduate courses, coordinated study programs and supervised Ph.D. and M.Sc. students.
José Mauricio Pulgarín Navarro
Project Manager
José Mauricio is an Agricultural Engineer from the National University of Colombia, with more than 30 years of experience in different agricultural processes of greenhouse crops of chrysanthemum, gerbera, aster, hydrangea, ornamental foliage, tomato and strawberry. Since 2015, Mauricio has focused on the development and technical management of medicinal cannabis crops. From 2016 to 2020 he worked as the Agricultural Director in the company PharmaCielo Colombia, developing many of the agricultural initiatives of the cultivation of medicinal cannabis in Rionegro's crops. In his professional career he has acquired extensive experience in the integrated management of pests and diseases, soil conservation, plant nutrition, irrigation systems, assembly and management of greenhouse crops, adaptation and installation of production processes, planning and programming processes, post-harvest management and product transformation processes. In addition to his expertise in agricultural issues, Mauricio has a wide knowledge in management systems, and has been certified as an auditor in ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 19001, Flor Verde, GAP and GMP.
