Margaret Maizel has dedicated her career to fostering innovation at the cross roads of agriculture, technology,and public policy. She has created and led programs at local, state, and federal levels—serving ten years on the Clarke County, VA Planning Commission,including as Chair, and co-authoring its foundational farming and conservation land use charters. Appointed by the Governor, she served as Chairman for five years on the Virginia State Land Records Modernization and Mapping Commission while co-owning and operating a registered Angus cow-calf operation in Virginia’sShenandoah Valley for 15 years.

Margaret co-founded and led a decade-long, congressionally funded USDA initiative to integrate federal geospatial systems, supporting rural decision-makers across the country. She directed a team at the Harvard Lab for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis that transformed the $5 million National Resources Inventory of the Soil Conservation Service, USDA, into a comprehensive national geospatial GIS framework. She also developed key analytics to evaluate how farm chemical use might impact water quality in the U.S., in collaboration with two USDA scientists. Her home team also established the first GIS facility at the Economic Research Service, USDA. 

After a merger and acquisition in1999, she became VP of Integrated Systems at VantagePoint Network, a subsidiary of Deere & Company. Later, she worked as a private consultant for leading global agricultural manufacturers, seed and fertilizer companies, and national conservation organizations.

In 2015, she co-founded VisualFarms to apply advanced AI and analytics to real-world farming challenges. Most recently, she has shifted her company’s long-term AI services and productstoward Agentic AI solutions that, for the first time, facilitate true partnershipswith farmers, creating systems that bridge policy, farm profitability, and Regenerative Agriculture.

A seasoned technology entrepreneur and business leader with demonstrated experience delivering innovative, artificial intelligence-driven digital transformation solutions, Cecil Samuel oversees VISUAL FARMS’ entire technology operations, from product planning, establishing processes and product team governance to setting technology direction, rolling out large-scale, real-time machine learning platform-based solutions and end-to-end product lifecycle management.

Cecil and Margaret Maizel, first met over twenty years ago at the Deere & Co’s VantagePoint Network, in Fort Collins Colorado. Throughout his three-decade career, he has held leadership positions in incubating global technology and innovation centers of excellence (CoEs) and has achieved success in operationalizing and scaling them up to enable rapid business growth and value, primarily in the well-funded Health Care venues. Cecile’s  primary industry focus has been in the U.S. health care, agriculture and government sectors through his company Novacis Digital, co-located at the Indian Institute of Information Technology, - Madras in Chennai India and Atlanta Georgie..