Rebecca White
Dr. Rebecca White is CEO of Pebble Labs, Inc., an ag biotech company in Los Alamos, New Mexico. She previously served as Chief Technology Officer for Pebble Labs and its sister company, Trait Biosciences. She has over a decade of experience in bioscience-based industries, including successfully pioneering efforts to commercialize algae as an agricultural crop. As a scientist with a strong business and communications background, she is experienced in both commercialization of novel plant-based products and technology transfer from lab to field.
During her career, Dr. White has overseen R&D, operations, and commercialization, as well as the leadership, culture, and organizational development activities of several companies. Prior to joining Pebble, most of Dr. White’s work was aimed at advancing algae production efforts resulting in successful commercialization algae for various products. Dr. White serves as the Executive Director for the Algae Biomass Organization, representing the industry to promote algae, algae-based products and the industry segments served by algal biomass. Dr. White was previously Vice President of Operations for Qualitas Health, Inc., maker of iWi®, a Houston based food and nutrition company making algae-based products, and prior to that, worked for Sapphire Energy, an algal biofuels company. Dr. White's passion for algae as agriculture, the demonstrated success at both Sapphire and Qualitas, and her role as a vocal proponent for algae as a crop helped to position algae for inclusion in the 2018 farm bill, a tremendous win for the algae industry as a whole.
Following her work at Sapphire building out their R&D operations in San Diego, California and Las Cruces, New Mexico, Dr. White brought Sapphire Energy's first-of-its-kind algal production facility out of construction and into operations in Columbus, New Mexico in 2012. She ran that facility until the Sapphire biofuels program concluded in 2015. This facility was the result of joint funding from the DOE (grant) and the USDA (loan guarantee) and was a successful demonstration of the combination of agronomic practices for long-term, continuous, outdoor production of algae biomass and the downstream processing system developed by Sapphire. A summary was published in 2015. Dr. White also handled the administrative and management roles for the site, which achieved impressive gains in personnel productivity, reduction of safety incidents, and improved environmental performance. Notably, this facility created ~25 jobs in the region when in operation, and Dr. White invested significant personal effort into personnel training and development. Her technical specialties include the translation and development of traditional agriculture principles to the domestication of algae as a crop, the establishment of field testing and process monitoring facilities and protocols.
Following her tenure at Sapphire, Dr. White joined Qualitas Health, Inc., Texas-based nutrition and supplements company with headquarters in Houston, Texas, as Vice President of Operations. Her role at Qualitas was to lead the commercialization of the production and processing platforms from lab stage R&D to finished product. This work resulted in the successful launch of Qualitas' nutritional lifestyle brand, iWi, which is sold in over 12,000 retailers nationwide and direct-to-consumer via multiple channels. As part of that success, Qualitas partnered with Green Stream Farms (who purchased the Sapphire facility late 2016) to expand algae production; Dr. White led that expansion with Qualitas's partner at the Columbus, New Mexico facility Dr. White previously ran for Sapphire, where again, the facility supports ~25 full-time jobs. This partnership was the first ever toll production agreement between algal producers, and successfully demonstrated the application of agronomic practices across farms in different geographies. Qualitas's success and its products speak to the challenges, opportunities, and importance of developing unit operations at scale to put algae on the map as the crop of the 21st century, which Dr. White has uniquely championed throughout her career. CNN Business - Mission Ahead featured Dr. White and the Qualitas CEO, Miguel Calatayud, in a segment about the future of food production, highlighting this work.
Dr. White received her Honors B.Sc. degree in Biology from the University of North Texas and her Ph.D. in Microbiology from Texas A&M University, where she was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. She was a post-doctoral fellow at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla. Dr. White is on the board of the Aggie Women Network; she is a 2019 Unstoppable Cultures Fellow and a member of Chief. Dr. White is very active in promoting STEM education, currently serving as an Emeritus Board member on the Algae Foundation’s Board of Directors and has participated in “Skype A Scientist” in K-12 classrooms across the country. She has a passion for science communication and public relations.