John Nicols joins ZYMVOL’s board of directors

John Nicols, former Codexis CEO and president, has joined ZYMVOL as board member. With this new addition, our company adds one extra seat to its current board, composed by Maria Fátima Lucas (CEO and founder of Zymvol), Sébastien Lefebvre (Elaia Partners), and Pierre Monsan (former TWB and former Cell-easy).

“I am thrilled to join Maria and the other directors as a member of Zymvol’s Board. After an extensive advisory engagement with the Zymvol team, it has become increasingly clear to me that its suite of computational platform technologies is uniquely positioned to enable enzyme discoveries and advancements that will bring significant value to a range of the world’s most important industries and companies.  I am super excited to be a part of making that happen”.

John Nicols, Board member at Zymvol

Thanks to his extensive business leadership experience in the protein engineering market, Nicols will help ZYMVOL strengthen its position as a computational enzyme innovation partner. Through his guidance, we look forward to expanding our business, exploring new avenues for growth and increasing our client base.

“The opportunity to add John to our board arrived just at the right time. Our company is now ready to expand and to tackle new challenges that need to be steered in the right direction. With John’s guidance, we’re confident we can make our shared vision for reliable enzyme innovation a reality”.

Maria Fátima Lucas, CEO at Zymvol

As our CEO Maria Fátima Lucas shared with us: “If you were organizing a panel on ‘how to run a successful enzyme engineering business’, John Nicols would be the person everyone would call to headline". Needless to say, at ZYMVOL we’re happy that he answered our call. Welcome to the team, John!

Top Protein Engineering Executive

As its CEO from 2012 to 2022, John led the turnaround and subsequent growth of US Nasdaq-listed Codexis Inc, a leading protein engineering company, driving its enterprise value from <$50 million to multiple successive years exceeding $1 billion, quintupling sales to exceed $100m, commercializing dozens of products into pharmaceutical, food & nutrition, and life science tool verticals.

Most recently, John launched Organicols, LLC, an advisory practice dedicated to helping generate sustained growth and value creation to a select group of mission driven enterprises who are inspired and poised to bring significant benefits to the planet and its people.

Previously, John held various executive roles spanning 22 years at Albemarle Corp, a leading specialty chemicals company, where he grew their largest Catalysts business unit to exceed $1 billion in global sales. John earned an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School, and a BS Chemical Engineering degree from the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (now NYU).

Latest board members

The addition of John Nicols to ZYMVOL’s board of directors is a testament to the company’s bet to maintain its sustainable growth, securing ties with some of the most seasoned professionals in the field.

Just over a year ago, in 2023, ZYMVOL also incorporated as an independent board member Pierre Monsan, emeritus professor at the National Institute for Applied Sciences (INSA), University of Toulouse.

Monsan is widely known as one of the early founders of Toulouse White Biotech (TWB), a public-private consortium for R&D in the field of industrial biotechnology. For 7 years there, he served as its director, where he led the development of over 180 R&D projects. Today, he holds emeritus status at the National Institute for Applied Sciences (INSA), University of Toulouse, after more than 50 years of professorship.