157 Liz Bui of Yulex: safer, sustainable materials

Guest bio

Liz Bui is Chief Executive Officer at YULEX, based in the U.S.A. (Seattle, Washington). She began her career in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry where she spent 20 years as Vice President, Intellectual Property Counsel and Diversity & Inclusion Officer. Liz was responsible for all areas of intellectual property, corporate and license transactional matters.  Her biggest contribution was developing a formidable patent portfolio for the company’s type 1 diabetes cell therapy product, which significantly supported the acquisition of ViaCyte, Inc. for 320M USD by Vertex Pharmaceuticals, a public company (VRTX)with a 117 B USD enterprise value in 2022.

On top of managing all operational and business matters at YULEX, Liz is an intellectual property and transactional lawyer and a PhD scientist. Liz is also adjunct professor at the University of San Diego School of Law teaching patent law and mentoring law students. Originally from Vietnam, at the age of six Liz escaped Vietnam the day Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) fell to the North Vietnamese forces.  She and her siblings, without their parents, were war refugees aboard a fishing boat until their rescue from the USS Midway. Like other Vietnamese refugees of that period, she was granted permanent residency and a new life in the U.S.

In 2022, Liz and her husband, Jeff Martin, Founder of YULEX, relocated back to the country of her birth to build YULEX’s new supply chain. In response to working with rubber smallholders in rural areas of Vietnam, Liz created the Equitable Ag program, a profit-sharing programme that benefits smallholders from YULEX sales and success. It is in Vietnam (and Thailand) that Liz and Jeff Martin innovated and developed partners for their raw materials, YULEX (natural rubber) Foam and YULASTIC (natural rubber) Filaments. Liz and Jeff are now based in the U.S. living between Seattle and San Diego, where they reside with their children.