Knauf is a proven executive & 30-year veteran of the biobased industry. He has defined his career by driving sales, negotiating collaborations & forging major partnerships. At Codexis, Knauf formed & led the bioindustrials unit & its innovations for fuels, chemicals & carbon capture in partnerships with Shell, Alstom, & Alcoa. At Genencor, he played leading roles to acquire & integrate industrial enzyme players. Biochemistry BS; food science MS.

Donen has defined his 30+ year career in chemical processing with executive leadership in manufacturing, engineering & technology development. Donen developed & scaled the process at Segetis, a start-up developing bio-based industrial materials. At industry pioneer NatureWorks (originally a Cargill-Dow JV), Donen led the development & construction of the first-ever global-scale plant making biobased plastic. He rose to Global Tech Mngr at Dow.

After a 40-year academic career, Dr. Don Kiely spun Rivertop out of the University of Montana (UM). He was the Founding Editor of the Journal of Carbohydrate Chemistry and holds twelve U.S. patents in the field. Kiely was Chemistry faculty at the University of Alabama at Birmingham before serving as Director of the UM’s Shafizadeh Center for Wood and Carbohydrate Chemistry through 2008. PhD in Organic Chemistry, the University of Connecticut.

John has led business development and sales & marketing for performance chemicals and biotechnology companies for 30 years. While at DSM, Monks directed the commercialization of new technologies that convert second-generation feedstocks into biofuels & intermediates for biobased chemicals, culminating in a large cellulosic ethanol joint venture between DSM and POET. At Genencor, Monks managed global accounts and product development strategies.

With over 20 years of start-up success, Kolstad led the development of the Company’s vision with Founder Dr. Don Kiely and outside industry experts. Before entering the chemical industry, Kolstad served as VP of Sales & Business Development for internet streaming measurement leader Loudeye, which went public & sold to Nokia. Jere's finance skills & strategy owe in part to a previous career with Deloitte as Audit Manager for Microsoft and SAFECO.