Santosh Mangalam is a distinguished global business executive, commercial strategist, and board leader with more than three decades of experience building, transforming, and scaling businesses across agribusiness, chemicals, technology-enabled operations, and international markets. Throughout his career, he has developed a reputation for combining rigorous commercial discipline with thoughtful governance, regulatory awareness, and an ability to translate complex strategic ambitions into sustainable business results. His leadership has spanned mature and emerging markets, multinational corporations, strategic partnerships, acquisitions, integrations, and major organizational transformations, giving him a uniquely broad perspective on how companies create enduring value.
Mangalam’s career was defined by progressive leadership roles at Dow AgroSciences and Corteva Agriscience, where he managed increasingly complex global businesses and portfolios. He most recently served as Vice President of New Business Venture & Growth Businesses at Corteva Agriscience, where he led a global new-and-emerging-business operation approaching $1 billion, identifying and developing new venture platforms, strategic partnerships, joint ventures, and acquisition opportunities. His responsibilities included evaluating businesses through both strategic and financial lenses, building relationships across international markets, and developing opportunities designed to strengthen competitive positioning, sustainability, customer value, and long-term profitability.
Previously, Mangalam served as Vice President of Insecticides, Nematicides, and Urban Pest Management, with responsibility for a global portfolio approaching $2.0 billion in annual revenue. In this capacity, he oversaw a complex network of products, manufacturing assets, commercial teams, and global stakeholders while helping lead the restructuring and integration associated with the Dow and DuPont merger. He managed portfolio strategy, operating performance, capital allocation, regulatory requirements, and organizational integration while maintaining a clear focus on profitability and future growth. His leadership included securing support for approximately $500 million in capital deployment and helping drive post-merger initiatives that exceeded targeted growth synergies.
Mangalam’s earlier leadership at Dow AgroSciences further demonstrated his ability to grow businesses in highly competitive global markets. As Global Business Leader for Insect Management, he held full P&L responsibility for a business exceeding $1 billion and led the organization to growth rates approximately three times the broader market. His strategic direction helped increase market share, improve global competitive positioning, and expand profitability while coordinating teams across diverse geographies. In a prior role leading the company’s global rice herbicides business, he managed a portfolio of approximately $500 million, achieved market-leader status with a double-digit global share, and championed a significant R&D investment to support the development of future growth products.
His international leadership foundation was strengthened during his tenure as Commercial Unit Leader for South Asia, where he managed a substantial regional portfolio and developed partnerships, alliances, acquisition strategies, and market expansion initiatives. Under his leadership, profitability more than doubled while the business achieved leading returns on investment. Earlier in his career, Mangalam also held national sales leadership responsibilities, directing extensive commercial teams across multiple territories and implementing performance systems designed to increase accountability, transparency, and execution. These experiences gave him a deep understanding of customers, distribution models, pricing, sales management, market segmentation, and the realities of operating at both strategic and field levels.
One of Mangalam’s defining strengths is his ability to operate effectively at the intersection of commercial growth, governance, risk, and operational execution. He has extensive experience in mergers and acquisitions, due diligence, valuation, strategic partnerships, post-merger integration, asset divestitures as part of product life cycle management, capital allocation, and business transformation. At the same time, he has managed complex regulatory matters involving global antitrust requirements, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, litigation oversight, compliance frameworks, and interactions with regulatory and investigative bodies. This combination allows him to evaluate opportunities not only for their revenue potential, but also for their operational feasibility, legal implications, risk profile, and long-term shareholder value.
Mangalam also brings meaningful board and advisory experience. As an Advisory Board Director for PROVIVI, a California-based company operating in the pheromones and innovative specialty chemicals space, he represented Corteva’s shareholder interests while contributing to valuation discussions, commercial strategy, deal structuring, market development, and exit planning. His board perspective is informed by decades of experience presenting major capital decisions, investment cases, growth strategies, and organizational priorities to senior executives and directors. He understands that effective governance requires the ability to challenge constructively, ask disciplined questions, balance opportunity with risk, and remain focused on the long-term interests of stakeholders.
Beyond commercial leadership, Mangalam has developed deep expertise in supply chain, business-process transformation, technology implementation, and organizational effectiveness. Earlier in his career, he led a team of more than 45 business-process consultants responsible for mapping and redesigning processes and implementing SAP systems across Asia. This experience gave him practical insight into how technology, data, operating processes, and organizational behavior must work together to support sustainable growth. Today, that systems-oriented background complements his interest in artificial intelligence, emerging technologies, supply-chain innovation, and new digital capabilities that can improve business decision-making and competitive performance.
Mangalam’s global perspective is one of the most important dimensions of his leadership. Over the course of his career, he has worked across approximately 40 countries spanning every continent, with significant experience throughout Asia, Europe, North America, Latin America, North and South Africa, and Australia and New Zealand. His international exposure includes major markets such as India, China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and the USSR, as well as numerous other mature and developing economies. He has learned to navigate varying regulatory environments, cultural expectations, distribution systems, customer needs, economic conditions, and business practices while building trusted relationships across borders.
His influence has extended beyond the organizations he has led. Mangalam has represented major corporations in industry forums and professional associations and has participated in speaking and leadership activities connected with organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Asia, CropLife associations in India, and the U.S. Global Leadership Council’s Indiana chapter. These experiences have strengthened his ability to engage with government leaders, industry executives, regulators, customers, investors, and other stakeholders on issues affecting global commerce, agriculture, innovation, and business development.
Mangalam holds a Master of Business Administration from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Science from Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University. His executive development includes global enterprise studies through the Thunderbird School of Global Management, Six Sigma Green Belt certification, SAP and enterprise systems training, sales management, facilitative leadership, situational leadership, change management, and other professional development programs. He speaks English and Hindi and has consistently invested in expanding his knowledge across strategy, leadership, technology, operational excellence, and international management.
At this stage of his career, Mangalam is motivated by the opportunity to apply more than 30 years of accumulated experience to organizations seeking thoughtful, independent, and commercially grounded leadership. He is particularly interested in board and advisory roles involving agriculture, chemicals, supply chain and logistics, artificial intelligence, emerging technologies, global expansion, sustainability, and adjacent industries. He is equally comfortable contributing to smaller entrepreneurial organizations and larger private or public companies, bringing an ability to connect strategy with execution while helping leadership teams anticipate risk, identify opportunity, and scale responsibly.
Underlying Mangalam professional accomplishments is a strong belief that successful leadership is ultimately measured by the value created for people, organizations, customers, shareholders, and communities. He has consistently emphasized developing talent, mentoring future leaders, building diverse and effective teams, and maintaining the integrity of business processes while pursuing ambitious commercial goals. His leadership philosophy reflects the view that growth and governance are not competing priorities; rather, the strongest organizations achieve lasting success when innovation, disciplined execution, compliance, technology, and responsible leadership reinforce one another.
Character:
Mangalam demonstrates integrity, accountability, and resilience in environments where leaders must balance growth ambitions with regulatory, financial, and organizational responsibilities. He approaches leadership with a strong commitment to developing people, honoring stakeholder responsibilities, and making decisions that support sustainable long-term value.
Knowledge:
He brings more than three decades of expertise spanning global P&L leadership, agribusiness, chemicals, M&A, supply chain, regulatory compliance, technology implementation, and international expansion. His experience across dozens of countries and multiple business functions gives him the ability to understand both the strategic and operational implications of complex business decisions.
Strategic:
Mangalam has repeatedly transformed opportunities into measurable business outcomes by aligning capital, talent, partnerships, innovation, and market strategy around clearly defined growth objectives. His experience leading integrations, acquisitions, global expansion initiatives, portfolio transformations, and billion-dollar businesses enables him to provide boards and executive teams with a disciplined perspective on both opportunity and risk.
Communication:
An experienced communicator who has represented global organizations before boards, industry associations, government stakeholders, regulatory bodies, partners, and international teams. His ability to translate complex commercial, regulatory, and strategic issues into clear priorities enables him to build alignment, earn stakeholder confidence, and move organizations toward decisive action.
