About Us
Southern Escape Vanillery was established in 2018 with the mission to grow, harvest, and brand Vanilla grown in Florida. Eventually, we will also offer a unique immersive experience for the growing agricultural tourism industry.
Since 2018, Southern Escape Vanillery has been on a unique journey of growing vanilla commercially in Florida. The United States is the largest buyer of vanilla beans that are primarily grown in Madagascar, Indonesia, and other distant nations. Our goal is to produce the highest quality vanilla beans and extract grown right here on American soil.
Having recently secured the necessary permits to establish Southern Escape Vanillery, the company is now entering the building phase and seeking investors to join us in our vision.
Tyson Chambers
Founder, CEO
Roland is a business manager with experience identifying and executing on market opportunities with companies such as Dell, Target, USAA and a handful of startups in communications, retail, technology and medical industries. His career focus has been on monetization of business opportunities, data analysis and marketing. He obtained his MBA in marketing and entrepreneurship from Purdue University.
Alan Chambers
Founder, CSO
Alan is a tropical fruit geneticist and plant breeder focusing of consumer quality of specialty crops. He is currently employed at the University of Florida where he conducts advanced molecular and genomics research on many tropical species. His research includes creating novel, specialty cultivars for licensing to domestic and international markets. His research in Vanilla includes optimizing growing practices and characterizing Vanilla at genetic, genomic and consumer sensory levels.
Abrahm Smith
Grower, CLO
Abrahm Smith has his own law firm where he specializes in international tax law. He represents high net worth persons with cross border issues, such as structuring US real estate investments, buying and selling companies, and international financing. He structures investments to help non-US persons minimize gift and estate taxation. He also helps individuals who have not properly reported to the IRS fix those reporting issues. Mr. Smith lives in the Redlands, an agricultural area south of Miami, where he has a commercial fruit grove.
Sandi Chambers
CTO
Sandi Chambers received a M.S. in Learning Design and Technology from University of South Florida and a B.A. in Linguistics from Brigham Young University. Additionally, she is certified in TESOL and teaches English to students of other languages in an online platform. She is adept at creating media-rich learning assets and digital media, web design, digital art, and graphic manipulation.