Corteva Agriscience, the Agriculture Division of DowDuPont, announced a series of changes to its leadership structure designed to optimize the company’s ability to deliver growth and value for shareholders, customers and employees as an independent, pure-play agriculture company.

These changes come in connection with the appointment announced by DowDuPont that James C. Collins, Jr., who has served as chief operating officer of the Agriculture Division, will become chief executive officer of Corteva Agriscience when it separates from the company, which is expected to occur by June 1, 2019.

Having made substantial progress in integrating DuPont Pioneer, DuPont Crop Protection and Dow AgroSciences, Corteva’s new leadership structure is designed to accelerate progress toward separation, the company said in a statement. This includes best preparing Corteva to function as a unified, independent company, with the ability to maximize the value of its balanced portfolio by creating an efficient structure that better integrates the business and commercial platforms support across the seed, crop protection and digital businesses.

“Over the past year, we have put in place a strong foundation to build Corteva into a global agriculture leader ideally equipped to grow by putting our customers at the center of everything we do,” Collins said. “Now, we are putting the best people in the roles to accelerate the momentum we’ve built as a division and capture the dynamic opportunities we have to serve our customers as a multi-brand, multi-channel business and drive growth into the future.”

Related:DowDuPont Agriculture Division to become Corteva Agriscience

In connection with this new structure, the leadership team reporting to Jim Collins includes: Rajan Gajaria, formerly vice president of Crop Protection of the DowDuPont Agriculture Division, will be executive vice president of Corteva Agriscience’s business platform; Tim Glenn, formerly vice president of Seed of the DowDuPont Agriculture Division, will be executive vice president, chief commercial officer; Greg Friedman, who has served as head of finance of the Agriculture Division and vice president of investor relations for DowDuPont, will be Corteva’s executive vice president, chief financial officer; and Cornel Fuerer, currently head of legal for the Agriculture Division, will be senior vice president, general counsel.