Suri Sehgal

Surinder Mohan (Suri) Sehgal is an Indian-American philanthropist with a long career as a crop scientist, seedsman, entrepreneur, and leading global hybrid seed industry expert.

His research and professional successes in the areas of plant breeding and genetics, ag biotechnology, intellectual property, business management, and seed industry development were carried out in executive capacities in several companies in the United States, Belgium, and Germany.

Suri Sehgal was born on 16 May 1934 in the town of Guliana in the Punjab Province of British India (now in Punjab, Pakistan) into an inter-caste Punjabi family.

He was the second son, and one of eight children, of a Hindu father, Faqirchand “Shahji” Sehgal, and a Sikh mother, Shushil Kaur Sehgal.

Shahji Sehgal was an associate of Mahatma Gandhi in the Indian National Congress, and the family home was a center for community organizing for India's independence from British rule.

Suri Sehgal met Edda Gudrun Jeglinsky (born December 25, 1941, in Breslau, Silesia) a few weeks after she first came to the United States from Germany in 1962 to live as an au pair in the home of Henry Kissinger, a professor at Harvard at the time.

Suri and Edda shared a refugee past as children.

Edda's family had been forced to flee from their country of origin, German Silesia, near the end of WWII.

The Jeglinskys escaped to Bavaria in 1945 and battled in Göppingen, Germany.

When Suri completed his Ph.D. at Harvard, he moved to Des Moines, Iowa, to work with Bill Brown at Pioneer Hi-Bred Corn Company.

After completing her two-year commitment to the Kissingers, Edda moved to Des Moines, Iowa.

Suri was thirteen when independence brought about the Partition of India in August 1947.

The Sehgal family home, in the region of Punjab that became part of Pakistan, was along the route of the mass migration of people who were displaced amidst the violence that followed Partition—Hindus and Sikhs to India and Muslims from India to Pakistan.

Suri ended up homeless for a time on the streets of Delhi and was a witness to horrific violence and bloodshed before being reunited with his family in a refugee camp in Amritsar, India.

Suri achieved a bachelor of science with honors and a master of science with honors in botany at Punjab University, where he received silver medals, merit certificates, and scholarships for academic achievement in 1955 and 1957.

He came to the United States in 1959 to study plant genetics and work with Paul C. Mangelsdorf at Harvard University.

He received the Anna C. Ames Memorial Scholarship in 1961.

He attained his Ph.D. in plant genetics from Harvard in 1963.

Suri Sehgal's professional career began in 1963 at a (then) regional seed company in Des Moines, Iowa, founded by plant breeder and future vice president of the United States, Henry A. Wallace, called Pioneer Hi-Bred Corn Company (named Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc., in 1970, and Dupont Pioneer in 2012).

Sehgal's tenure at Pioneer lasted 24 years.

He was mentored and befriended by Pioneer executive Bill Brown (William L. Brown).

Suri and Edda were married in the home of Bill and Alice Brown in 1964.

The Sehgals raised four children, helped raise two nephews, and opened their home to other relatives who emigrated from India to the United States.

The creation of their foundations and the Sehgals’ ongoing commitment to philanthropy was rooted in the violence and loss they experienced during their childhoods as refugees fleeing from their countries of origin.

Both are proud Americans who want to share their good fortune.

Suri Sehgal is chairman and trustee of the Sehgal Foundation and S M Sehgal Foundation.

Edda Sehgal is a trustee.

S M Sehgal Foundation's mission is to strengthen community-led development initiatives to achieve positive social, economic, and environmental Agri-Business in rural India.

The headquarters building in Gurgaon, now called Gurugram, in the state of Haryana, received platinum-level certification for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) from the US Green Building Council (USGBC).

Sehgal is the chairman of two seed companies.

Misr Hytech Seed International S.A.E. in Cairo (which he helped establish with other shareholders) is a leading seed company in Egypt, breeding and developing high-yielding corn, sorghum, and squash.

He later (1982) completed the Harvard International Senior Management Program in Mont-Pelerin, Switzerland.

After the divestment of a group of four seed companies that Sehgal founded and ran with his wife, Edda Sehgal, the couple created two nonprofit organizations to promote rural development in Suri's country of origin: Sehgal (Family) Foundation in 1998 in the US, and S M Sehgal Foundation in India.

The foundation focuses on water security, food security, and social justice, particularly empowerment.

A proponent of corporate social responsibility and environmental sustainability, Sehgal has also provided support individually and through the foundations for projects related to agriculture research, the preservation of biodiversity and the conservation of natural resources.

Sehgal is a Trustee Emeritus of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, having helped to establish the William L. Brown Center of Economic Botany at the Missouri Botanical Garden in 2001.

Sehgal has served as a trustee or board member of several other nonprofit organizations, including the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) and the Trust for Advancement of Agricultural Sciences (TAAS).

The other seed company, Hytech India, which Sehgal founded in 2004,

develops high-yielding hybrid seeds in Hyderabad, India.