Sonja Jost
She co-founded and leads DUDE CHEM, a virtual green deeptech manufacturer (CDMO) of chemicals.
Their team previously optimized the manufacturing processes for many large players such as LONZA, DSM, Boehringer Ingelheim, and many more.
DUDE CHEM successfully fundraised from well-known European VCs and also won the founding father of Green Chemistry Prof. John Warner to join their dev team.
Although not being Jewish, Sonja started to wear a Star-of-David necklace after the 10/7 attack as a symbol to protect Jewish life. As the VP of the CCI in Berlin she couldn’t endure that Jews are under threat again.
She is a member of different boards and high-tech juries, e.g. of the Economic Advisory Board of the German Green Party of the Bundestag (2023-2024), the Editorial Board of the U.S. peer-reviewed journal “Green Chemistry Letters and Reviews” (since 2018) and a jury member of the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator (2018-2024) which she also supports with tech due diligences.
She received various awards and recognitions for her work.
Since 2017, she is a re-elected member of the General Assembly of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce Berlin.
In 2019, Jost was appointed as ambassador of the initiative “Germany – Land of Ideas” of the German Government and the Federation of German Industries BDI.
Jost gives advice to governmental organizations, scientific institutions, NGOs, as well as several political parties in Germany, the U.S., and in the EU. She has co-founded and initiated several campaigns and networks that support the translation process of scientific findings into industry which she also promotes as frequent guest on economic and political panel discussions and contributions with guest comments for Handelsblatt, Frankfurter Rundschau, Wirtschaftswoche.
She previously created the spin-off DexLeChem in 2013 from the German Scientific Cluster of Excellence UniCat from TU Berlin. Within a few years, the company achieved to successfully enter the conservative chemical-pharmaceutical market and turned profitable.
Her team has been the first one who brought chemical reactions in water into the fine chemical and pharmaceutical industry.
They received outstanding testimonials for their work from big players e.g. Lonza, Boehringer Ingelheim.