Bryan Witherbee has built a career solving problems with cutting-edge technology.

Complex problems have complex solutions, and people like Bryan Witherbee are at the forefront of helping humanity address some of its toughest challenges. Equal parts scientist and entrepreneur, Witherbee’s career has ranged from contributing to the development of life-saving medicine to empowering farmers with the technology needed for improving sustainability and stabilizing their industry. It’s a pretty impressive resume for a guy who says he has never been much of a planner.

After graduating from the University in 1994 with a degree in biology, Witherbee headed to St. Louis. Only about three hours from his hometown of Galesburg, Illinois, it was a natural progression, and in addition to landing a job, he was hoping to remain close to friends he made at school.

“I wish I could take credit for executing around a grand plan that had its roots back at Truman, but I have never been a planner,” he said. “I definitely have benefited from a philosophy of saying ‘yes’ to most opportunities or adventures.”

Witherbee launched his career as a contractor in the health and human services division of Monsanto. Between the corporate landscape of mergers and acquisitions, along with Witherbee’s can-do attitude and willingness to take on all challenges, it is difficult to quantify how many companies he has worked for and all the roles he has occupied. Figuring conservatively, he’s had about 10 different titles at roughly half a dozen companies.

“I have been open to moving down different paths, learning new technologies, instruments or techniques, traveling to different locales, meeting new people, challenging current concepts and taking risks to innovate and improve,” he said.

At all his stops, the pattern that emerges is clear: Witherbee has the scientific chops to understand how a project should run and the business acumen to make big ideas become realities, whether it is using next generation technology to grow more food without increasing costs or implementing key biological analysis protocols for genotyping and cell screening.

“The common thread is that the roles I have taken have centered around new technology development and implementation, usually around solving a problem where there is no existing solution, or existing solutions that do not scale to be mass produced or cost too much to implement,” he said. “Leading a team that can overcome issues or identify a different path has been my later career path.”

Bryan and his daughter Riley Witherbee

Witherbee’s most recent endeavor is Agragene, an agricultural biotechnical company focused on sustainable pest control. After being introduced to the company’s board through the BioSTL network, he worked with its investors to relocate the venture from San Diego to St. Louis, and he currently serves as the president and CEO. Agragene’s core technology is the ability to manufacture sterile insects through the use of gene editing tools such as CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats). Sterile insects are then released into fields where they mate with invasive pests. Because they are sterile, no offspring are produced, and during the growing season the total number of invasive insects decreases, as does the amount of damage done to crops.

While one of the more beneficial aspects to this approach is its reduction in chemical insecticides, Witherbee is well aware that concepts like gene editing, gene sequencing and nanotechnology can raise their own areas of concern, especially among those without a scientific background. The concept of increasing public awareness while simultaneously implementing these technologies in an ethical manner is a challenge he welcomes.

“These technologies are tools, and like any tools, their impact depends on how we use them. Gene editing, for example, holds incredible potential to cure genetic diseases, improve food security and even fight cancer. Nanotechnology can lead to safer, more effective medicines and cleaner energy solutions,” Witherbee said. “It’s important to be cautious and ethical. Scientists, governments and the public all need to be part of the conversation about how these technologies are developed and applied. Transparency, regulation and public input are essential to ensure they are used responsibly for the greater good.”

Witherbee’s track record would indicate he is a principled steward of the resources at his disposal. It’s one of the reasons he still has a passion for his work now three decades into his career.

“I love getting people excited about science and technology, to show and share what is possible and maybe help imagine a better future,” he said. “When I worked in pharma, it was exciting to know that a medicine that I contributed to, or that was developed by our company, was helping people live longer, healthier lives. In agriculture, it is incredibly rewarding to see how new technologies could empower farmers and growers.”

Witherbee and his wife Shelby (Wooden) Witherbee (’95) live in St. Peters, Missouri. Their daughter, Riley, continued the family connection with Truman and is a two-time graduate. After earning a bachelor’s degree in 2024, she received a Master of Arts in Education in the spring.

Ope Amosu is combining his business acumen and West African culinary roots to achieve the American Dream.

By all measures, Ope Amosu (’10) was doing everything “the right way.” After graduating with a business degree, he landed a job in his hometown of Houston, Texas, where he earned an MBA from Rice University. He secured a high-paying corporate job in the energy sector that took him around the world. On paper, he was the model example of a School of Business graduate, so much so that he was named the Business Young Alum of the Year in 2017.

With the brightest of career paths ahead of him, Amosu instead pivoted to invest in himself and do something he found more culturally significant.

“I was asking myself, ‘why is it difficult for me, regardless of where I am in the world, to gain access to the cultural elements that I grew up on as a Nigerian immigrant that moved to the U.S. at the age of three?’” he said. “I decided to create the first modern contemporary West African-inspired food and beverage concept, but now it’s turned into a mission of making my culture more accessible and building community along the way.”

The seeds of a food-related career, in hindsight, began for Amosu in childhood. As early as elementary school he was mixing together sauces and selling them to classmates in the cafeteria, and he sold homemade cookies in high school.

“Some of my earliest entrepreneurial pursuits happen to deal around food,” he said. “I’ve always been very enamored with culture and restaurants and hospitality. It’s been something that’s a part of me since growing up.”

Amosu’s vision has come to life in the form of ChòpnBlọk, a West African-inspired restaurant. After his initial location debuted in 2021 and became the top-grossing eatery in the trendy POST Houston entertainment district, Amosu opened a second restaurant, a 3,000-square-foot space in the city’s historic Montrose neighborhood.

The name ChòpnBlọk comes from the Pidgin English spoken by more than 300 different tribes in West Africa, and it is a micro example of the unity Amosu is striving to create.

“In that dialect the word chop means to eat, and block is a location,” he said. “If you’re coming from a different background and you see ‘chop and block’ it registers immediately this is a location to go to eat.”

The welcoming vibe extends beyond semantics. For example, the menu includes jollof rice, an African precursor to Cajun jambalaya. Amosu has crafted a meal that combines elements of both dishes, which not only allows him the opportunity to share a story about West African culture, it opens his restaurant to a wider customer base. 

“That’s how we start to walk you into maybe less familiar territory. It’s very much designed to build community in the sense of welcoming everyone home,” he said. “We can’t only be serving Africans. We’re really going to be sharing this with the world.”

At first glance, ChòpnBlọk might have the appearance of an overnight success, but the foundation of its prosperity was built by Amosu’s business background and his humility to start at the beginning. For several years, after laboring at his corporate job during the day, he would work in restaurants at night in roles like dishwasher and line cook. When he was accepting his award for Business Young Alum of the Year, no one in the room knew he had a second job at Chipotle so he could get hands-on industry experience.

As Amosu gained skills, he started crafting his own dishes, testing them out by hosting dinner parties for friends once a month, each time taking their feedback and factoring it into the next item.   

“It was basically like a market segmentation exercise for me from 2018 all the way through 2020,” he said.

From there, he expanded to taking over existing restaurants on their slower nights, offering up the dishes he spent years perfecting. It was a grassroots approach that helped when the first location of ChòpnBlọk opened.

“What we were really doing was building a customer base and building advocates, building a following,” he said.

His business model worked, and Amosu has been featured in national media including an episode of “Top Chef” on Bravo, “No Passport Required” on PBS and “Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi” on Hulu. ChòpnBlọk even partnered with the Houston Rockets to be the first West African cuisine available in a professional U.S. sports stadium.

If Amosu has a secret weapon in building ChòpnBlọk it’s his wife Janelle (Gill) Amosu (’10), who, in addition to providing her accounting expertise, serves as a sounding board and level head of the operation.

“We balance each other out. I am the big picture, visionary, aspirational, optimistic person, and she is very much the realist,” he said. “From the early days, she’s really the only person I can truly lean on. She keeps me grounded.”

Before reaching the age of 40, Amosu is already well into his second career, and just like his first, he’s doing everything “the right way.” In an industry synonymous with volatility, he and Janelle have meticulously planned for stable growth, and his goal of one day owning 100 ChòpnBlọk franchises is anything but far-fetched. One could say he is still the model School of Business graduate.