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Liz Bui takes us behind the scenes at Yulex, a material science company that’s replacing extremely useful, but problematic petroleum-based products with natural rubber alternatives.
Liz Bui is Chief Executive Officer at YULEX, based in the USA. She began her career in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry where she spent 20 years in senior roles. On top of managing all operational and business matters at YULEX, Liz is an intellectual property and transactional lawyer, a PhD scientist and also an adjunct professor at the University of San Diego School of Law.
Originally from Vietnam, at the age of six Liz escaped on 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 they were rescued by a US aircraft carrier. Like other Vietnamese refugees from that period, she was granted permanent residency and a new life in the U.S.
We’ll hear about the origins and mission of Yulex and its long-term collaboration with Patagonia to develop natural rubber foam for wetsuits, replacing neoprene, a petroleum-based material.
Liz explains some of the key principles underpinning Yulex’s approach to innovation, and how these are fundamental to helping it scale out and create benefits right across its value network.
Liz talks us through some of the environmental and health issues associated with neoprene, and explains how Yulex is making it easier for suppliers to use natural rubber instead.
She tells us about Yulex’s latest material innovation, Yulastic filaments – a sustainable alternative to petroleum-based elastane, aka spandex.
And we hear how Yulex’s Equitable AG program supports rubber smallholders in Southeast Asia, distributing 50% of the profits back to them.
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Read on for more on our guest and links to the people, organisations and other resources we mention.
Links we mention in the episode:
Links for our guest:
- LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/liz-bui-yulex/
- Yulex – https://www.yulex.com/stories
Books, people and organisations we mentioned
- Join or Die documentary https://www.joinordiefilm.com/
- Episode 97 Alice Mah – Plastic propaganda. Alice Mah, Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick, helps us unpick the propaganda about plastics and their role in a circular economy https://www.rethinkglobal.info/97-alice-mah-unpicking-plastic-propaganda/
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.
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Podcast music
Thanks to Belinda O’Hooley and Heidi Tidow, otherwise known as the brilliant, inventive and generous folk duo, O’Hooley & Tidow for allowing me to use the instrumentals from the live version of Summat’s Brewin’ as music for the podcast. You can find the whole track (inspired by the Copper Family song “Oh Good Ale”) on their album, also called Summat’s Brewin’. Or, follow them on Twitter.
