HydRegen use bio-based manufacturing techniques to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the chemical industry, a sector underpinning 96% of all manufactured goods. if HydRegen’s biotechnology approach were adopted for one example process, paracetamol production, it could save hundreds of thousands of tonnes of CO₂e per annum.
Dr Holly Reeve is the Chief Executive Officer, responsibly for strategy, risk management, fundraising, and crucially, leadership of a team that spans scientific and business capabilities. She also worked on the technologies right from inception and says she “occasionally is asked to weigh in on technical problems.”
Holly reflects on the importance of developing her leadership, given that HydRegen is at a high-growth, more commercially-focused, phase which comes with new risk and strategy considerations. Over the last 10 years she has learned a huge amount about entrepreneurship, which helped prepare for moving from an academic to CEO role in a SME. She is excited to make the next step up in her leadership journey and sees the mentorship programme within the Shott Scale Up Accelerator as important to build on previous mentoring and coaching from Horizon 37.
Holly is also excited to be able to pursue some more formal training within the Shott Start Up Accelerator to learn a new skill set relevant to her current role. She highlights that “formal training opportunities have been invaluable in my career development so far and it is something I advocate to others.”
Sector or technology specific training is also valuable. So far, HydRegen have partnered for a lot of their chemical engineering needs, but they envisage building up this part of their team over the next 6–12 months.
HydRegen are progressing towards their first contract development programmes and technology licences. Holly acknowledges that, “whilst exciting, this brings new challenges in strategy, risk, and negotiation whilst also balancing internal and external work programmes. I’m excited to skill up in these areas, and to build a network of people with similar technologies that are at different commercial stages.”
