Dr. John  Holliday

President and Senior Consultant, Mushroom Consulting LLC – Carson City, Nevada Mar 2018 – Present

Designed, built and / or consulted on well over 100 mushroom farms in more than 20 countries around the world. These farms are for cultivating culinary mushrooms, medicinal mushrooms and the industrial use of mushroom for applications such as construction materials, agricultural amendments, animal feeds, and non-animal meat and protein substitutes.

President, Aloha Medicinals Inc. - Carson City NV Feb 1999 - Jan 2017

Aloha Medicinals Inc. is a Nevada based biotechnology manufacturer of and raw materials for the pharmaceutical and nutriceutical industries, and manufacturer of finished dietary supplements. Currently distributing to over 1000 pharmaceutical and supplement companies in more than 65 countries. Identifying a unique market niche that was unfilled, I founded Aloha Medicinals Inc. in Hawaii in February of 1999. At that time, although there had been a lot of research done on the medicinally important compounds found in many species of exotic mushrooms, there was no real medicinal mushroom industry in North America. I started Aloha Medicinals to fill this niche. With my extensive experience in mechanical engineering, I was able to design and build machinery to optimize and automate most of the process for growing exotic fungal species; changing what had been the traditional agricultural model of mushroom farming into a laboratory based, biological manufacturing process. Aloha Medicinals quickly became quite successful, rapidly outgrowing the Hawaii business climate - due primarily to high shipping costs to and from the Hawaiian Islands. In the spring of 2002, I moved the company to Santa Cruz, California, acquiring and merging with a long-established mushroom research facility named Stoller Research, which had been operating in California since 1955. Over the next five years my vision proved to be justified, as once Aloha Medicinals products were introduced into the dietary supplement and functional food sector, the market for medicinal mushroom products exploded worldwide. This spawned many competitor companies around the world, with Aloha Medicinals clearly leading the pack. By the spring of 2007 we had outgrown the Santa Cruz, California facility and also felt the California business climate was not the best for such a fast-growing company. After researching different locals around the United States and overseas, we decided Nevada would be the best business location to move to, so the company relocated to Carson City, Nevada in March, 2007. This was a very strong move for the company as we found Nevada to be more business friendly than California, especially in regard to exports. By 2008 exports had come to represent 65% of the company’s sales. Over the next nine years sales continued to grow at a consistent rate of over 25% per year, and by 2012 we had opened branch offices in Europe, Asia, Africa and Mexico. In 2016 Aloha Medicinals Inc. was sold to an investment firm specializing in biotech manufacturing companies. Over the course of my 18 years as President of Aloha Medicinals, I learned all the ins and outs of managing a large and growing corporation, with multi-continent responsibilities, FDA oversight into every aspect of manufacturing, all aspects of Quality Assurance and Quality Control (QA/QC) as applied to both food manufacturing and pharmaceutical raw materials, and in general, I dealt daily with the many layers of regulatory oversight and the many and varied responsibilities inherent in such a senior management position. In 2008 and 2009 I was awarded the U.S. Dept. of Commerce ‘Small Business Exporter of the Year’ award two years in a row for my work at Aloha Medicinals Inc. I also received the Nevada Governors Award for Business Excellence in 2008.

John C. Holliday Mechanical Engineering - Maui, Hawaii Jan 1984 – Jan 1999

Mechanical engineering and custom machinery design independent contractor. Prior to starting my own machinery design company in 1984, I had worked as a mechanical engineer for several large firms, beginning in 1977. In the years 1977 until 1984, I worked as an Engineer for Harris Satellite Corp, ITT Inc, Western Geophysical Inc, Teledyne Exploration Inc, and Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company Inc. As an independent Mechanical Engineering Contractor, I designed and built all manner of specialized machinery, and one of my major clients was the U.S. Navy, including design work on U.S. Navy nuclear submarine’s high-pressure air systems and equipment.

Education

PhD(H) – Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China 1998

I consider myself to be largely self-taught in a number of different fields. One of my driving forces is I have always been passionate about education, since my earliest years, studying (and lecturing) in universities all over the world. After graduating high school in Titusville Florida in 1974, I joined the army and availed myself of the opportunity of studying engineering through the U.S. Army Engineer School at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia, mainly through correspondence courses. I studied varied courses at Kansas State University during my military service from 1974 to 1977 while stationed at Ft. Riley, Kansas. Through correspondence courses I earned an AA degree in 1974 in Conservation of Natural Resources from the National School of Conservation, Washington, DC, then a second AS in Automotive Engineering from Advanced Technical Schools, Chicago, Illinois in 1976, and by the time I finished my military service in 1977 I had completed the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Ft. Belvoir Army Engineer School. From 1978 through 1981, I took varied courses at University of Heidelberg in Germany and have continued to study far and wide since then in any subject that caught my interest. In 1998 I was awarded a PhD(H) degree from the Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China in Mycological Pharmacology for the work I conducted for the Government of China on cultivation of a rare South American mushroom with anti-cancer properties, Agaricus blazei. I continue to study to this day through courses offered by “The Great Courses” and online courses from Coursera.com. I have been a guest professor and lectured at Universities all over the world, including the Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts institute of Pharmacy, UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, University of Nevada Reno, North Carolina A&T University, Makere University in Uganda, University of Ghana, Accra Polytechnic Institute, and many others. Most often I have lectured on Mycology, Medicine and Chemistry.

Skills

One of my strongest skills is being able to accurately assess and develop personnel into their highest potential, building long term valued employees. In the 18 years I ran Aloha Medicinals, I had virtually no turnover of employees, showing that people respect and appreciate the chance to learn new skills, perfect old skills and develop into strong team members. I have extensive experience in business development, advertising, in fund raising, and in customer service and customer satisfaction. I am able to guide development of the business through identifying near- and long-term goals and finding ways to motivate the team members to strive towards reaching those goals. I have many years of senior management experience, including food manufacturing and distribution, and the regulatory affairs inherent in all aspects of food and drug manufacturing. I have extensive experience in exporting products and have worked with all the Northern Nevada based business and government organizations, working in support of the exports of U.S. products. I am an internationally well know Mycologist, specializing in Mycological Pharmacology, which is the medicinal properties of mushrooms and related fungi. I am fully qualified in all aspects of Mechanical Engineering, welding, machine shop fabrication, manufacturing, plumbing, electrician, and all types of construction. Besides my mother tongue, English, I am also conversant in several other languages.

Publications

I have published several dozen technical articles, most of them in peer-reviewed scientific journals. I have also authored two chapters in technical books, one chapter titled “Cordyceps” in the Encyclopedia of Dietary Supplements, a standard FDA reference manual, and another book chapter titled “Cordyceps – a Highly Coveted Medicinal Mushroom“ for the book “Medicinal Plants and Fungi: Recent Advances in Research and Development”. I have assisted several other authers in writing their books on medicinal mushrooms, and also authored The Cookbook of Welding, a privately published book for training sugar industry maintenance personnel for the Hawaiian sugar industry. I am on the Editorial Board of The International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms, the preeminent peer-reviewed journal in that field of science. I am the Vice President of the IUnternational Society of Medicinal Mushrooms, and have been a contributing author to about a dozen other books, all in the field of human and veterinary Medicine or Mycology.

Patents and Trademarks

I have been issued two U.S. patents, numbers 7,407,795 and 8,008,060. I currently have six other U.S. patents pending. I also own several trademarks for products and advertising logos I have developed.

Associations

I am the Vice President of the International Society for Medicinal Mushrooms, the Mycology Advisor to the Government of Ghana, the Vice President of the African Society for Edible and Medicinal Mushrooms and have been on the Scientific Committee and Organizing Committee for all the International Conferences on Medicinal Mushrooms from the 2nd IMCC in 2003 until the present 12th IMMC to be held in September of this year in Italy. These conferences have been held in 9 different countries around the world. I have advised the Government of Iceland on starting up Biotechnology business to expand their export markets. I am or have been the Senior Mycology Consultant for the companies Mycoregix Inc, TDOC, LLC, Global Equipment Manufacturer LLC, and the Chief Scientific Officer for AM Newco, LLC, Sempera Organics LLC, Trucelium Inc, Ayla Bioscience Inc, and CalNeva Organics, LLC.

Professional References:

Roger Scott – (775) 750-6070

Dan Ailes – (775) 886-6300

Rebecca Barrows – (775) 291-7613

Jason Watkins – (877) 746-9397