William Devens Email & Phone Number

Brookline, Ma, Us

Boston, Massachusetts, United States

I have worked at Manulife Investment Management, Timberland and Agriculture for the last 8 years on the agricultural side of the business. I started in 2015 as Senior Agricultural Economist where I was responsible for price forecasting, and developing investment theses for entry into new markets (Canada, Brazil, Australia and Chile) and new products (tree fruits, fresh vegetables, canola and pecans). I also worked closely with the Director of Acquisitions to develop a new platform for MIMTA (Farmland Plus), which focused on investments in midstream agricultural investments. In 2018, I joined the Farmland Plus team as Associate Director of Strategic Initiatives. In this role, I was responsible for developing entry strategies for new markets (Chile) and new commodities (blueberries, avocados, citrus, cherries and apples) and also was responsible for deal origination and was co-lead for MIMTA’s first agricultural investment in Chile. Another part of this role was to devise the company’s strategy and lead M&A activities with other farmland investment managers and to develop MIMTA’s AG entry strategy into South America. In March of 2023, I was promoted to Director of Strategic Initiatives for the entire MIMTA Ag portfolio (both Farmland Plus and Farmland). In this role, I was not only responsible for expansionary projects and new entry strategies but also evaluating the totality of MIMTA’s Ag portfolio to understand where we could improve our current portfolio from an efficiency standpoint and generate better returns. Key highlights of this role were developing a database which highlighted commodities that MIMTA should focus on going forward based on returns and future economics of the commodities and updating strategies in our core crops that would enable MIMTA to generate stronger returns in the future.

Danvers, Massachusetts, United States

From 2006-2015, I worked for HighQuest Partners. I started at HighQuest as an Engagement Manager where I was responsible for sourcing projects and then managing a team of analysts through the completion of the project.In 2008, I became a Managing Director in HighQuest Partners’ consulting practice and was responsible for not only sourcing and managing projects but also developing project budgets, timelines and managing the analyst team and reported directly to the owner.Between 2006 and 2011, most of the consulting projects that I worked on were focused on developing origination strategies for global trading companies in North and South America. In 2011, HighQuest Partners founded the Global Ag Investing conference and at this time, our focus changed somewhat and many of the following projects focused ion assisting Global Ag Managers in developing fund strategies and conducting due diligence on funds for Ag investors looking to invest in the space. As I gained more experience in the Global Ag Investing space, I decided that I wanted to become more directly involved in the space and I left HighQuest Partners to join Manulife Investment Management, Timber and Ag in the summer of 2015.

I began as an Economic Analyst at Bunge in the Latin American group. In 2000, I moved to White Plains where I assisted in developing Bunge Global Market's globbal research team. Our focus was on studying supply and demand and trade flows and finding potential arbitarge opportunities for the trading team in the cash market. In 2002, I moved to Hamburg, Germany where I traded soybean meal into the Northern European market. In 2003, I moved back to White Plains where I worked in strategic planning and was involved in the acquisition of two port facilities and the development of a computer system which tracked internal trade flows and assisted the treasury department in forecasting monthly and annual working capital needs.

Mba, International Business

Bachelor Of Arts (Ba), History