Ginkgo Bioworks Announces New Chief Business Officer and Head of Metabolic Engineering to Support Business Growth

BOSTON, June 29, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ginkgo Bioworks, the organism company, today announced Ena Cratsenburg as chief business officer and Dr. Will Schroeder as head of metabolic engineering. Together, these new additions bring years of expertise in the biotechnology industry to propel Ginkgo's organism design capabilities and ability to scale.

As the new head of metabolic engineering at Ginkgo, Dr. Will Schroeder will manage the teams of organism engineers designing microbes that produce cultured ingredients. Schroeder joins Ginkgo from Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM), where he served as vice president of technology and oversaw metabolic engineering, strain development and fermentation process development. Before ADM, Schroeder spent 12 years at Cargill Incorporated, overseeing strain and fermentation process development, as well as enzyme aided processing technology development.

Ena Cratsenburg joins Ginkgo as chief business officer and will oversee new business partnerships and the commercialization of Ginkgo's technology and products. Cratsenburg joins Ginkgo with over a decade of business development experience in biotech where she held positions as senior vice president of the consumer sector at Intrexon, senior vice president of business development at Evolva and vice president of business development for Amyris. Prior Intrexon, Cratsenburg also held various management and business development roles at Pixar Animation Studios and BP P.L.C.. 

"Ginkgo is working with companies to help them completely rethink the way they make everyday products," said Jason Kelly, CEO and founder of Ginkgo Bioworks. "Ena and Will bring the combination of industry experience and outside the box thinking that will help us continue to improve upon our process and bring organism design to new industries. They'll play a critical role in our effort to meet the increasing demand for Ginkgo's technological capabilities and ensure we continue to create better products and bring them to market."

The addition of these two new executives comes at a time of rapid growth for Ginkgo. In January, the company announced the acquisition of Gen9, a DNA synthesis and assembly company. With Gen9's technology now in house, Ginkgo is able to vastly improve its speed and capacity in the construction of new organism designs. Last fall, Ginkgo opened its latest state-of-the-art foundry, Bioworks2, which has allowed Ginkgo to further automate much of its genetic engineering processes and expand partnerships with Fortune 1000 companies. Additionally, Ginkgo was recently named to CNBC's 2017 Disruptor 50 list.

About Ginkgo Bioworks
Headquartered in Boston, Ginkgo Bioworks uses the most advanced technology on the planet—biology—to grow products instead of manufacture them. The company's technology platform is bringing biotechnology into a wide range of new markets, enabling fragrance, beauty, food and health companies to make better products. For more information, visit www.ginkgobioworks.com.

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SOURCE Ginkgo Bioworks

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