ABOUT
Management Team
Our team provides technical, engineering, materials, marketing and financial consulting, project management and IP licensing to governments, NGOs, universities, and private industry globally that are seeking to establish a guayule program in any stage.
Jeff Martin (left), American Biorubber Founder and CEO, and Jim Mitchell (right), CTO, examine a field of guayule at the University of Arizona’s Maricopa Agricultural Center.
Our Management and Consulting Team
Jeff Martin
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Jeff Martin, is passionate (and stubborn) about changing long-held industry reliance on petroleum-based products to plant-based products, which are more sustainable and better for the environment and better for human health. Since graduating from Georgia Tech with a Materials Science and Engineering degree he became an expert in the area of natural and synthetic polymers including natural rubber and was recently inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Engineering Alumni and where he serves as an advisory board member for the School of Materials Science and Engineering. Jeff understands the whole supply chain from agriculture to product development and sales and marketing, including Founder & CEO of Yulex Corporation, which developed the first plant-based foam to replace neoprene from two sources of rubber plants: Guayule and Hevea brasiliensis.
Jeff launched the sales operations of London Rubber Company’s (Regent Medical) U.S. startup, which subsequently became a global leader in the surgical glove market. He began his career in R&D and held positions as both a scientist and a sales executive with the Professional Healthcare Group of the Kimberly-Clark Corporation, and the Ethicon Division of Johnson & Johnson, Inc. in the Polymer Development Department.
Stephen James Mitchell
Chief Technology Officer
Trying to sum up Mitchell’s career is no easy task. With a history that spans over two decades working with Fortune 100 Companies, DARPA, and The World Bank, his focused has always been on bringing new technologies to reality.
Joining Yulex in 2006 Mitchell continued his passion for innovating and pioneering advanced bioprocesses and materials, helping to make guayule a new and viable industrial crop. At Yulex he was responsible for engineering the company’s bioprocessing technologies, designing, and constructing process facilities and overseeing material development and commercialization.
Inspired and motivated by “what if” and big, bold ideas his passion led to the creation of the world’s first all-natural replacement for neoprene foam.
Mitchell graduated from UCSB with a degree in mechanical engineering and an MBA from Rutgers University. Mitchell splits his time between the family farm in New England with his wife and the beaches of Southern California.