Management

Carolyn J. Sluis is an industry leader in plant tissue culture and has been working in the field of plant micropropagation and potato tissue culture since 1975. She is listed as inventor on five patent applications (issued and pending) regarding inventions of new tissue culture techniques. Ms. Sluis is the principal founder of Tissue-Grown Corporation. Since the company's founding, she has been President and Chief Executive Officer for the company.

Ms. Sluis' formal training comes from education in plant environmental biology, at University of California Santa Barbara and San Diego campuses. She also completed course work with the "father of commercial plant tissue culture" Dr. Toshio Murashige, at the University of California, Riverside. From 1975-1977, Ms. Sluis was employed as the tissue culture manager for K.M. Nurseries in California, one of the first commercial tissue culture laboratories. In 1978, Ms. Sluis started a tissue culture laboratory for NPI (then Native Plants, Inc.) a biotechnology company based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her research there resulted in development of production systems for a number of endangered species and unusual native species. She initiated the potato project at NPI, which produced the first commercial virus tested potato plantlets in the United States. From 1981-1986 Ms. Sluis was a Research Scientist and Research Group Leader at Plant Genetics, Inc. (now a division of Calgene, Inc.). She led the group responsible for the development of one of Plant Genetics, Inc.'s key products: potato minitubers. In addition to research, she pioneered commercial potato minituber production, now an industry standard for the production of elite seed potatoes. Ms. Sluis has consulted internationally with companies in Thailand, Japan, France, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands. She is a key consultant for Floratiss, B.V. in the Netherlands, which was one of the world's largest lily bulb micropropagation laboratories in Portugal and South Africa.

Peter Tolley has worked since 1985 at the Santa Paula laboratory and greenhouse site which was home to the original Twyford International micropropagation laboratories, now operating as Tissue-Grown. He has been active in the plant tissue culture, research, and greenhouse management industry this entire time, specializing in high volume production of young starter plants. He has extensive technical experience as well as site operational experience in the areas of staff management, budgeting, scheduling, purchasing, physical site operations, and cost control. Mr. Tolley is highly experienced in communicating with management, sales, customer service, government agencies, and customers in order to create a win-win environment for all. Before working at Tissue-Grown, Peter played a key role in plant production at Fides North America, a leading producer of unrooted cuttings, and young starter plants to the horticultural industry. Prior to working at Fides, Peter Tolley was employed as a manager through Twyford International where they produced from 10 to 18 million plants annually for over 15 years and employed over 85 people. Mr. Tolley received a Bachelors Degree for Botany from Humboldt State University in 1984.

Travis Johansen has worked with Tissue-Grown since 1999. He started out as a dishwasher and eventually moved into management. Mr. Johansen is a graduate of Hawai'i Pacific University, earning a Bachelor's Degree of Science in Computer Science in 2010, and has studied at Santa Barbara City College and the University of California, Santa Barbara. He currently designs, implements, and maintains software and information systems, and handles administrative tasks at Tissue Grown.