Summerland, B.C. — Okanagan Specialty Fruits (OSF) has appointed Paul Carter as Head of Enterprise Strategy as the company enters a new stage of growth following its recent return to founder ownership.
In the new role, Carter will work across OSF on enterprise strategy, investment decisions, long-range planning and major cross-functional initiatives, helping the company allocate resources effectively and translate strategic priorities into action.
“Paul brings a valuable combination of agricultural experience, strategic thinking and more than a decade helping organizations improve complex investment and resource-allocation decisions,” said OSF CEO and co-founder Neal Carter. “I’m very pleased to have him bring that experience to OSF as we build the next phase of the company.”
OSF developed the groundbreaking nonbrowning Arctic® apple, which it grows and processes as fresh-sliced packaged slices and Endless Orchard hard cider. The company continues to expand its capabilities in advanced genetics while developing new products, technologies and commercial opportunities in fresh produce.
“I’ve had a connection to OSF and agriculture for most of my life, but I’m coming back after building my career outside the company,” Paul Carter said. “What excites me is the opportunity to combine that background with the strategy and decision-making experience I’ve gained over the last decade to help OSF focus its people and resources on the opportunities with the greatest potential.”
Carter is a structural engineer by training and holds an MBA focused on marketing strategy and finance. He spent more than a decade at Copperleaf, a software and consulting company specializing in helping large organizations make better investment and resource-allocation decisions. As a principal consultant and advisor, he worked with more than 30 organizations on investment prioritization, decision frameworks, organizational change and extracting greater value from limited resources. He also served as a product manager, helping create and launch Copperleaf’s second software product and guiding it through its product lifecycle to become a significant contributor to the company’s revenue. His later work focused on strategic transformation initiatives across Copperleaf’s consulting organization.
Carter also has longstanding experience in agriculture and horticultural technology. He grew up working on his family’s orchard in British Columbia and later worked with his father and brother designing and constructing large orchard shade structures in Washington state. Earlier in his career, he worked on fruit-packing facility design and software for packing operations and fruit management and spent a summer at the Summerland Pacific Agri-Food Research Centre working with OSF on fruit transformation.