Ryan Gilliam

Dr. Ryan Gilliam is a Venture Partner at 1955 Capital where he is focused on energy, sustainability, waste upcycling, materials innovations, and emerging technologies. As a serial entrepreneur in the sustainability field, Ryan has developed electrochemical, catalysis, and chemical technologies for the beneficial reuse of carbon emissions, industrial waste reutilization, and production of building materials and chemicals. In addition to serving as a Venture Partner at 1955 Capital, Ryan is the CEO of Calera Corporation, a company founded on the beneficial reuse of CO2 to produce a range of building material products that both directly capture and offset CO2 emissions. Under Ryan’s vision and direction, Calera developed a second core technology, marketed as ‘Chemetry’, an industrial chemicals platform redefining how commodity chemicals are made. Within these two industrial areas, Ryan successfully drove the industrial scale-up of multiple technologies, a business development program resulting in strategic partnerships with Fortune 500 chemicals and engineering companies, commercialization efforts which led to an active presence in China and Southeast Asian markets, the development of a smart parts platform and set of enabling strategic supply agreements, and the building of teams consisting of world-class technical and business talent. Ryan obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in Materials Science and Engineering. On his work in catalysis and electrochemistry, Ryan has 10+ peer reviewed publications and is an inventor on 60+ patents in the energy, sustainability, products and materials spaces.