Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Holmgren.
Jennifer, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
When NASA was landing the first spacecraft on the moon in 1969, I was living in Colombia with my family and all I wanted was to become an astronaut! That same year, aged 9, my family moved to the U.S. when my father, a skilled aircraft mechanic had an opportunity to work in California.
I think watching my parents take that leap of faith and moving the family to an unknown place showed me the value of courage and sacrifice. They moved to places unknown to ensure a better life for their children. This instilled in me the view that one needs to work for the greater good and showed me the value of taking risks and trying, rather than fearing things that are different.
Thanks to a wonderful high school chemistry teacher, I decided to study chemistry at Harvey Mudd College in California, and while there met the second big influencer of my life, after my parents, my husband, Don.
We married the day before graduation and then moved to Illinois to pursue PhDs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. While I enjoyed academia, I always felt that the biggest differences could be made by technologies being implemented at commercial scale and so in 1987, I joined UOP (now Honeywell UOP), a multinational petroleum technology company headquartered in Illinois where I eventually founded and led UOP’s Renewable Energy Business.
The next stage of my career started in 2010 when I left UOP to become the CEO of a small startup company named LanzaTech.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
There are always challenges. Both personally and professionally and sometimes, these have ended in failure but I am a firm believer that failure is a great teacher. There is no downside to failure; the only downside is not trying. This is especially relevant when you have spent your career doing things that everyone tells you “can’t be done”; my answer is simply, “Watch me!”
When it comes to battling the status quo, you need to be resilient, keep up the fight and ensure you are the last one standing, but, most importantly, you need friends and family. It is their support that enables success because challenging the status quo means turning easy nos to yeses and that requires a lot of voices of support. You can’t do it alone.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about LanzaTech – what should we know?
LanzaTech is the world’s first carbon recycling company. Our process is like making beer, except we convert pollution not sugar into ethanol.
To explain why what we do matters, let us consider the state of the planet today. We now have new weather categories as temperatures rise, with extended drought periods and severe weather events becoming the norm. Weather bombs, frozen iguanas in Florida, floodwaters quickly freezing in Boston so cars become stuck in the ice, around 9000 wildfires in California, nocturnal temperatures of over 40C in the Middle East and flights being grounded because it’s too hot for planes to fly. The climate is changing. There is no doubt.
We are already seeing the impact of climate change on coffee growing communities in Colombia. It is projected that by 2050 the coffee growing regions in the land of my birth will be much diminished. Coffee growers are just one example of this change will impact agricultural communities globally as temperature change brings new pests, drought, and fire risk. This doesn’t just impact the price of your morning coffee or the fruit you buy at the market, this severely impacts the livelihoods of millions of farmers around the world. This is just one aspect of how carbon emissions are changing the world we live in, and LanzaTech is working on turning that problem into an opportunity.
We have over 25 nationalities working in our team, with projects in Asia, India, Europe, Africa and the US and our first commercial plant just started up in China. Our tech will have the impact of taking 700M cars off the roads every year. Not only that, but we can make products from emissions, so imagine wearing sneakers or yoga pants that used to be pollution?! Real stuff from recycled carbon. That is pretty cool, and it is happening here in Chicago!
I would say that thing I am most proud of as a company is knowing that we will make an impact. Our impact will go beyond the bottom line because we will enable a world where pollution is recycled and the climate and health impact of these emissions will be reduced in cities, towns, and homes around the world. But, most importantly, our success will be a beacon to others trying to impact this sector. If we can do it, they will know they can too.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
My husband and my dogs (Bankston and Butter) enable my success and turn my failures into learnings. We are on this journey together, and they play a key role in all facets of my life.
I think success is about how you handle failure and how you course correct when things go south, and they will inevitably go south at some point. Success is being resilient, resisting and persisting and always finding a way, especially when you are trying to convince the world to do something new.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.lanzatech.com
- Twitter: @LanzaTech
Image Credit:
LanzaTech, Jennifer and Hounds by Don Holmgren
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