Simon Waddington

Co-founder/Chief executive Officer

Simon is a serial entrepreneur who has spent his entire professional career working at the intersection of science and technology.

Prior to Cambium, he was the co-founder and CEO of Abunda—a biotechnology company that was sold to a Swiss publicly-traded company, Evolva. Subsequently, he became Evolva’s COO and then its CEO.

Before becoming an entrepreneur, Simon spent more than a decade in venture capital, investing across materials, life sciences, and related technologies in US, Europe, and Israel.

In his earlier career, he was Product Development Manager for Zeneca’s biopolymers business and Senior Research Scientist for ICI Advanced Materials.
Simon holds a doctoral degree in physics from the University of Liverpool, UK and a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School.

Stephan Herrera

Co-founder/Chief Marketing Officer & Head of Government Affairs

Stephan has held leadership and strategy roles at senior and executive levels in a wide range of biotech firms. He has worked with mostly publicly held firms, each of them pioneers in novel platforms such as synthetic biology, nanotechnology, RNAi, and fermentation-produced specialty ingredients.

He has played a role in billion-dollar merger transactions with Big Pharma, participated as a delegate at the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, and is a sustainability and product life cycle expert. Before that, he was an investigative reporter for nearly 20 years, covering all aspects of biotechnology.

Stephan earned his master’s degree at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and his Bachelor of Science in business and economics at Colorado State University.

Brett Schneider

advisor

Brett Schneider brings three decades of experience in advanced materials, automation, and industrial leadership.

Brett was an operating partner with Arsenal Capital, building materials and automation platforms as well as chairman and CEO at Carbon Conversions. He held multiple executive positions at Hexcel Corporation including president of fibers and industrials and senior vice president of corporate business development where he led mergers and acquisitions.

He has also held multiple executive and management roles within Meridian Automotive Systems and Brunswick Boat Group. With experience on nine boards, Brett has led over 100 transactions and successfully closed more than 15 investments. He has led technology and materials development, equipment design, installation, and qualifications of over $1.5B in new assets globally to aerospace, defense, and a variety of industrial customers.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from the University of Washington and a Master of Business Administration from Westminster College.

Nicholas Madren

chief operating officer

Nicholas is a former Naval Aviator with over two decades of active duty service and more than four years deployed at-sea in multiple combat zones. He has led high performing teams including as part of a Carrier Air Wing, and supporting Special Operations Command and international partners to combat weapons of mass destruction proliferation.

His last military assignment was at Defense Threat Reduction Agency as Deputy to the Program Manager for three international DoD programs operating 19 projects in 22 countries.

Nicholas holds a Master of Business Administration from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California and a Bachelor of Science in physics from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Nicholas is a licensed fixed wing and helicopter commercial pilot, with instrument rating and instructor certification and over 3000 flight hours.

James Griffin

Chief Technology Officer

Throughout James’s career, he has led the development and qualification of aerospace composite materials. He has also held various commercial and manufacturing leadership roles at advanced material companies.

Prior to Cambium, James spent more than a decade at Cytec/Solvay (now Syensqo) developing and qualifying aerospace composite materials for both commercial and military applications. Then he moved on to lead the Composites Business Unit at Lyten, an advanced materials startup in San Jose, CA.

James holds a doctoral degree in chemical engineering from Imperial College London, and a Master of Chemistry from the University of Hull, England.

Timothy Gardner

Chief Informatics Officer

Tim is a pioneer of synthetic biology, a life science and software entrepreneur, and an inventor of multiple computational and biotechnology innovations. He has three decades of experience in technology organizations, leading all facets of corporate, commercial, and research and development functions.

Before Cambium, Tim held leadership roles at several successful science and software companies. He was strategy leader and general manager of digital solutions at Cytiva, founder and CEO of Riffyn (a provider of Software as a Service (SaaS) for process data management and analytics that was sold to Siemens in 2022), and vice president of research and development at Amyris. There, he was co-inventor of the yeast metabolic pathways that now power the full-scale biomanufacturing for Amyris and its licensees.

Tim was also an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University, where he focused on microbial physiology, genetics and data science. He has been recognized as a technology pioneer by MIT Technology Review, The New York Times, and Scientific American.

He holds a doctoral degree in biomedical engineering from Boston University, and a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from Princeton University.

Francisco Gimenez

board director

Francisco has a proven track record of steering companies in the right direction.

He was the resident data scientist at Formation 8, where he worked with portfolio companies to strategize, prototype, and recruit for data products. He was also the founder of Catenus Science, a data science consulting and recruiting firm that used an apprenticeship model to help early-stage companies build data science teams.

Francisco received his doctoral degree in biomedical informatics from Stanford, where he was a Ruth L. Kirchstein fellow. His research focused on clinical decision support for radiology, which won him the Martin Epstein award for best paper at the American Medical Informatics Association in 2014.

He was the commencement speaker for the Stanford School of Medicine in 2015. He earned his Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and computer sciences from UC Berkeley while doing research on Parkinson’s disease at University of California, San Francisco.

Chris Pederson

board director

Chris Pederson is a seasoned advanced materials executive with more than 35 years of experience leading innovation, commercialization, and growth across high-performance materials industries.

Most recently, Chris served as Senior Vice President and President of the Specialty Engineered Materials business at Avient Corporation, where he led a growth strategy that doubled the business through a combination of organic expansion, innovation, and strategic acquisitions focused on composite materials.

Prior to Avient, he was Vice President of Strategy at Hexcel Corporation, overseeing corporate strategy and mergers and acquisitions. Earlier in his career, Chris held multiple senior leadership roles at Cytec Industries, including leading composites product development, serving as Vice President of R&D, and ultimately managing the company’s global Aerospace Engineered Materials business.

Chris began his career at Boeing, where he worked in composites engineering roles supporting major military aircraft programs.

Jeff Immelt

advisor

Jeff joined New Enterprise Associates in 2018 as a Venture Partner working with innovative growth companies in healthcare, industrial automation, clean tech, and IoT. He has also served for 16 years as chairman and CEO of GE, where he revamped the company’s strategy, global footprint, workforce, and culture.

He has received numerous awards for business leadership and chaired the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness under the Obama administration.

Jeff earned a Bachelor of Arts in applied mathematics from Dartmouth College and a Master of Business Administration from Harvard University.

Shannon Clark

advisor

Shannon works for the technology company, Palantir, where she leads policy, strategy, and growth decisions with their defense clients.

Prior to joining Palantir, Shannon was a Director for Counterterrorism Policy on the National Security Staff (NSS) at the White House. On the NSS she planned, directed, and coordinated the development of counterterrorism strategies.

Before joining the National Security Staff, Shannon was a special assistant to the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, leveraging her expertise as an intelligence officer to provide analytic support to the vice chairman. Prior to working for the vice chairman, Shannon was a counterterrorism analyst with the Department of Defense.

Shannon holds a Bachelor of Science from Georgetown University and a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Nicola Sinclair

advisor

Nicola led the Air Innovation Fund within the Rapid Capabilities Office of the British Royal Air Force where she drove strategic innovation.

Previously, Nicola was a chief of staff within UK Strategic Command where she managed a division generating data-led insights in support of UK equipment program spending options. Prior to that, Nicola led the Joint Above Secret User Team in strategic command and was a senior intelligence analyst providing decision support to the British ambassador and the commander and deputy commander of International Security Assistance Force, Kabul.

Nicola holds a Bachelor of Science from Edinburgh University.