Aindrea Campbell, Zymergen

Q&A: Ain­drea Camp­bell goes small, step­ping away from Ap­ple to head man­u­fac­tur­ing at Zymer­gen — where am­bi­tions are big

Over the past 22 years, Ain­drea Camp­bell has worked with just two cor­po­rate gi­ants, Ford Mo­tor Com­pa­ny and Ap­ple, with gen­er­a­tions of ex­pe­ri­ence be­tween them. But in her new role as Zymer­gen’s chief man­u­fac­tur­ing of­fi­cer, Camp­bell comes to a com­pa­ny with years — eight — of his­to­ry, not decades.

This month, Camp­bell joined syn­thet­ic bi­ol­o­gy play­er Zymer­gen to lead man­u­fac­tur­ing for the com­pa­ny’s “bio­fac­tur­ing” process, which fer­ments ge­net­i­cal­ly en­gi­neered mol­e­cules to cre­ate prod­ucts that can be used in a range of po­ten­tial ap­pli­ca­tions, in­clud­ing elec­tron­ics, con­sumer health and agri­cul­ture, just to name a few. The process, Zymer­gen says, ob­vi­ates the need for tox­ic chem­i­cals and huge in­fra­struc­ture de­mands in tra­di­tion­al man­u­fac­tur­ing, po­ten­tial­ly cut­ting costs by 90% in half the time.

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