Sonja Jost is the CEO and Co-Founder of DUDE CHEM, a deep-tech virtual manufacturing company revolutionizing the production of pharmaceuticals through sustainable processes. With over a decade of entrepreneurship experience in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, she has led DUDE CHEM to secure huge commercial contracts with global pharmaceutical companies. Sonja has a track record of driving innovation and has raised successful funding rounds (e.g. from Frontline, Octopus, B2Ventures, Vorwerk etc) to advance DUDE CHEM’s mission. An advocate for sustainable manufacturing, she is an advisor to numerous government bodies and organizations in Europe and the U.S., and a passionate mentor to women in STEM. Her work has earned her multiple awards and has been named as one of “25 female inventors who are changing our world” (EditionF, Handelsblatt, ZEIT online).

She has been appointed to different boards and high-tech juries, e.g. of the Economic Advisory Board of the German Green Party of the Bundestag (2023), the Editorial Board of the U.S. peer-reviewed journal “Green Chemistry Letters and Reviews” (2018) and a jury member of the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator (2018) which she also supported with tech due diligences.

Since 2022, she has been the Vice-President 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 young company successfully entered the conservative chemical-pharmaceutical market and turned profitable. The young team has been the first to bring 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.