Essential's team of scientists in lab coats standing beside a bioreactor in Nairobi
Essential's team of scientists in lab coats standing beside a bioreactor in Nairobi
Essential's team of scientists in lab coats standing beside a bioreactor in Nairobi

Our success is built on the expertise and dedication of our team

Essential Team

Our Leadership Team

Grant Gordon PhD Essential
Grant Gordon, PhD

CEO & Co-Founder

Fre Tachea Essential
Fre Tachea

CTO & Co-Founder

Ignatius Kirimi Essential
Ignatius Kirimi

Managing Director

Robert Breugelmans Essential
Robert Breugelmans

CFO

Shanna Mahihu

Commercial Director

Wyckliffe Aluga Essential
Wyckliffe Aluga

Director of Engineering and New Product Development

Corina Ha Essential
Corinna Ha

Strategy Lead

Winnie Sum PhD Essential
Winnie Sum, PhD

Scientific R&D Lead

Cyrus Rutere Essential
Cyrus Rutere, PhD

Scientific R&D Lead

Richard Masaku

Operations Manager

Vivien Wangari

Finance Manager

Chloe Friedland Essential
Chloe Friedland

Product Lead

Flevian Khagayi

Quality Assurance Manager

Hillary Kakai

EHS & Maintenance Manager

Board & Advisory

Board of Directors

Jan-Paul Bruins
Jan-Paul Bruins

Global Foods Strategy and M&A Lead, Unilever

Karen Levy
Karen Levy

Co-Founder, Fit for Purpose & Serial Social Entrepreneur

Shruti Chandrasekhar
Shruti Chandrasekhar

Head of Investments for Private Equity in Africa, IFC

Advisory Network

Leah Milani
Leah Okullo

Former Managing Director, Delphos

Nick Ouzounov, PhD
Nick Ouzounov, PhD

Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer, Geltor

Bart Haverkort, PhD
Bart Haverkort, PhD

Chief Technology Officer, Every

Deepti Tanjore, PhD
Deepti Tanjore, PhD

Director, ABPDU (UC Berkeley Lab)

Sufia Askari
Sufia Askari

Managing Director, Sight and Life

Peiman Milani
Peiman Milani

Director, Food Initiative, The Rockefeller Foundation

Our Values

Essential Icon Mission Driven
Mission Driven

Building a best-in-class, mission-driven organization poised to create breakthrough innovations requires focus, commitment, and joy. We are laser-focused with our time, energy and resources. We are committed to the problem rather than any specific solution, and we are obsessed with designing solutions that our customers love. We are motivated by the urgency of the problem, and we bring a good dose of joy to our work.

Essential Icon Audacious
Audacious

We believe that creating locally grounded breakthrough innovations is key to solving the most important problems of our time. Transforming food systems and tackling malnutrition requires new thinking, new capabilities, and new models. We’re courageous and willing to take the leap to create new solutions, and always ground our audacity and interrogate our assumptions with a deep-seated humility.

Essential Icon Impact Obsessed
Impact Obsessed

Delivering high-impact, cost-effective innovations at scale is core to our DNA. We are committed to creating innovations that outperform current practices on impact and cost-effectiveness and scale to meet the actual size of the problem. We not only assess our innovations across these metrics, but we design our innovations for them. These translate into our daily work too: we are a data-driven, results-oriented team. We work effectively and efficiently, and we care about how well we do the work.

Essential Icon Creative
Creative

We know the best work is grounded in empathy and curiosity. We are generous in our interpretation of each other. We focus on asking questions and listening. We interrogate assumptions. We are genuinely interested in learning. We not only think this is the best way to enjoy the work we do, but to do good work.

Essential Icon Collaborative
Collaborative

We build - and just like being a part of - diverse teams with different life experiences that see the world in different ways. Working together, earning trust, and supporting each other is key to doing good work.

Careers

Two Essential team members in lab coats talking in the R&D lab
Two Essential team members in lab coats talking in the R&D lab

Join our multidisciplinary team turning breakthrough science into real-world impact