sustainable-materials
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Chris Valencius Put an Art Director Inside a Biotech Lab - Then Made Silk Speak Business
After two decades in advertising, Chris Valencius moved from selling familiar brands to translating unfamiliar molecules. At Evolved By Nature, his job is to make silk-derived biotechnology legible, useful and commercially real.
Alex Blum Took a Sales Check to Bangladesh. He Came Home With a Plastics Company.
A technology salesman went to Bangladesh hoping to help. The trip led him from a refugee-camp documentary to a stubborn, practical bet: make plant-filled plastics work on the machines factories already own.
Sidney Quitorio Left Software to Make a Better Smoke - One Difficult Leaf at a Time
A $400 cannagar sent a software engineer to his workbench. The mold became Purple Rose Supply; a customer request for the missing wrap became Native Leaf Co - and a lesson in following the awkward problem next door.
Maria Intscher-Owrang
Maria Intscher-Owrang is the co-founder and CEO of Simplifyber, a Raleigh-area materials startup that molds cellulose-based liquid directly into finished textile and composite parts, eliminating spinning, weaving, cutting and sewing. After more than two decades designing for Vera Wang, Calvin Klein, Dirk Bikkembergs and Alexander McQueen, she left luxury fashion to rebuild manufacturing from the fiber up, landing partnerships with GANNI and Kia and a $12M Series A led by Suzano Ventures.