Proco Partnership Profiles: Dr Nádia Skorupa Parachin, VP of Industrial Biotechnology at Cemvita

Having initially partnered in 2023, Proco Group has been working closely alongside Cemvita to build a high-performance team for 1 year. The most recent project was to find the right person to join Cemvita as their VP of Industrial Biotechnology. After an extensive search and process, Dr Nádia Skorupa Parachin accepted the role.

In this interview Nádia discusses her professional journey, what attracted her to Cemvita and more.

You previously worked for Ginkgo Bioworks, managing a team of up to 18 metabolic engineers. After 4 years working within the biotechnology space, what attracted you to Cemvita?

It was important to me when considering moving from Ginkgo to Cemvita to determine whether the move was right for my family. We’d been based in Boston for more than 4 years and accepting the role with Cemvita would mean moving across the US to Houston.

What drove me to make this decision was the opportunity I saw in Cemvita – both in terms of the organization and the role itself. The VP of Industrial Biotechnology role would give me the opportunity to lead a Research & Development team and scale up their pipeline for clean technologies. Moreover, Cemvita gave me the opportunity to work closely alongside leadership, which meant I would be able to help shape the roadmap.

You worked for a startup before, then for a more established group – why did you decide to go back to an earlier stage pre-production organisation?

Ginkgo was a fantastic experience; however, it is a platform company, and I was ready to work for a startup that developed its own products, which was a key motive for me to accept the role with Cemvita.

I am very mindful that nothing is a given in the startup world; you have to juggle and balance a lot of plates, manage leaner budgets, and consistently focus on how the technology will become commercial. It’s a challenging but fun environment to work in, and I like that I can be creative and innovate.

My background is in Research & Development, so I thought returning to a startup organisation would enable me to get to do that again. I was also looking forward to the opportunity to be involved with the commercialization of Cemvita’s technology.

What have you found to be the key challenges in both environments?

One factor that I’ve had to adapt is that different companies come from different cultures. I’ve worked in a few cities and countries, from Brazil to Houston. When I moved for the role with Cemvita, I had to adapt to the Texas environment and get to know the teams. I’ve been fortunate that everyone has been really receptive and happy with regards to my joining the organisation.

The second factor, which is not so much of a challenge, is the period of lagging whilst I get up and running in the role. There’s a lot to learn, from trying to understand the structure and the team dynamics to what was not working and what needed to be changed to achieve Cemvita’s goals.

I’ve worked in startups for 10-15 years, so was not surprised by the pace of the organisation. In fact, I beleive it comes with responsibility of position I took; if you join an organisation in a VP role, you are responsible for setting and maintaining the pace.

4 months into the role, what does the trajectory look like for the next 12 months?

We are working at full speed towards product commercialization. We’re also working on a couple of projects in parallel to make sure we have all the KPIs in place to successfully scale our technology up.

Cemvita is pioneering in its field; the organisation has pushed ahead and has a market leading position as a result. It’s a very exciting market to be in and over the next 6-12 months we’ll be driving forward to demonstrate that our technology works at scale.

If you were to mention anything to individuals who might look to join Cemvita in the future, what would you share with them about the organisation?

I would say that you should be motivated by Cemvita’s mission. We work in an industry inspired by nature, so any potential future employees should be inspired by the lifestyle we are inspiring as an organization. We’re not just building products; we’re also implementing sustainable practices at the office, as well as running offsites to give back to the local community, for example, cleaning local parks.

From a technology perspective, it’s exciting because we are building a pipeline to be the frontier on synthetic biology, putting researchers in touch with the latest technologies for micro-organism engineering.

Finally, what I would say is even more exciting at Cemvita is the possibility of transferring what we’re doing on the bench to scale up quite rapidly.

Being based in Houston, known as a global Oil & Gas hub, have you noticed any signs that the sentiment towards the industry is changing?

You can definitely feel the sentiment towards oil and gas is changing within Texas. There are waves of biofuels and bioenergy; it’s not the first time they are being talked about. When I reflect on this topic, the main difference I see now is that Oil & Gas organizations are no longer competitors for Cemvita; they’re partners, and we’re looking for innovative solutions together.

Now, when people ask me if I think biofuels are going to take off now, my answer is “Yes”, as we now have important partners from the Oil & Gas industry trying to think creatively on solutions for the environment.

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We’d like to extend thanks to Nadia for taking the time to talk about her career Cemvita.

Proco Group partners with organisations like Cemvita to fill critical roles. For a conversation about your company’s hiring strategy, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Tim Essex Senior Partner | Industrial Markets | North America

T: +1 778 251 1085 E: tim.essex@weareprocogroup.com