Sara Olson, senior director of crop science venture investments at Leaps by Bayer, is one of our top 50 Rising Stars in corporate venturing for 2025.
Sara Olson is trying to bridge what has long seemed like an impossible gap – making healthy food taste just as good as the things we consume as guilty pleasures.
“We are getting to the point where we have got enough science knowledge that we will not have to sacrifice the enjoyment of a food for it to be healthy for us,” she says. “The line between agriculture and consumer health is starting to blur in a real way.”
With a PhD in biochemistry and crop genetics, Olson joined the investment team at Leaps by Bayer two years ago to focus on investments at the intersection between agriculture, food and consumer health. Leaps by Bayer was set up in 2015 by the German pharmaceuticals company Bayer to target the big challenges facing humanity, from reducing the environmental impact of agriculture to curing cancer.
“The most successful investors are those that can play the role of confidant and therapist for their founders”
One recent investment that excites Olson is One Bio, a company developing fibre ingredients that can address everything from digestive health to diabetes. “This is a case where we are talking about agricultural products that, through the use of really groundbreaking science, become more valuable, more nutritious and more effective,” she says.
Olson started her career at advisory company Lux Research, where she helped launch the firm’s coverage of agtech. Over time, Olson became frustrated with just advising companies, wanting to be the one “pounding the table and defending the ideas”.
This led her to corporate VC, first at FMC Ventures, then Leaps, where she expanded her investment scope to include crop traits and epigenetics, food tech and on-farm automation.
Olson’s approach as an investor is defined by “radical authenticity and open-minded kindness”. She believes that having empathy and being willing to have hard conversations is key to success. “The most successful investors are those that can play the role of confidant and therapist for their founders,” she says.
See the full list of Rising Stars 2025 here.
