2017 So Far:  Growing our Technology & Our Team

2017 So Far:  Growing our Technology & Our Team Jason Kelly, Ginkgo Bioworks co-founder and CEO

The first half of 2017 has been nothing short of incredible for Ginkgo. We acquired Gen9 in January to bring their DNA synthesis capabilities in-house, and last month announced successful commercial-scale fermentation of an ingredient with our partner Robertet. Both of these were significant milestones in our work on continuing to scale our technology, but we know there’s more work to do.

Today, we’re officially announcing two new additions to our team here at Ginkgo who will play a huge role in our ability to continue to scale: Ena Cratsenburg, our chief business officer, and Will Schroeder, head of metabolic engineering. Ena has over a decade of business development experience in biotech, but also spent more than five years with Pixar.  She’s already brought that mix of practical experience and outside-the-box thinking to her role overseeing new partnerships and the commercialization of our tech and products. You can read more about Ena’s day-to-day experience at Ginkgo here, and how she found her way from Pixar to biotech.

Will serves as our new head of metabolic engineering, managing the teams of organism engineers designing the microbes that produce cultured ingredients for our customers. He comes to us from ADM and spent 12 years at Cargill. Both of these companies are partners of ours, and it’s great to have Will’s unique understanding of the industry and incredible expertise in enzymes (he’s the author or inventor of 16 publications and patents in the areas of microbial fermentation, molecular biology and enzyme catalysis!).

Please join me in welcoming Will and Ena to the team! You can read more about our commitment to diversity in our hiring practices here, and see open job recs here.

Posted by Jason Kelly