Science, nutrition drive ChromaDex exec Yasmeen Nkrumah-Elie

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Yasmeen Nkrumah-Elie, Ph.D., is the worldwide director of R&D for exterior analysis at bioscience firm ChromaDex.

Currently main an interdisciplinary, cross-functional staff advancing the science of NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide), it’s beneath Nkrumah-Elie’s management that ChromaDex has grown its exterior analysis program to greater than 240 materials switch agreements and relationships with exterior investigators throughout 33 nations. The program’s aim, she says, is “to assist propel science”—and that’s exactly what she’s accomplished throughout her profession.

As a scholar at Florida A&M University (go, Rattlers!), Yasmeen questioned how meals truly will get to at least one’s plate, and refocused her research on organic and agricultural engineering. A four-month sojourn to her household’s ancestral house in Ghana was spent learning beneath a shaman, studying about conventional botanical medicines. After incomes her doctorate, Nkrumah-Elie started to surprise how populations might use vitamin to offset being uncovered to so many chemical compounds of their environments. Toxicology turned her focus.

One of Nkrumah-Elie’s profession targets is to enhance complement science by increasing the quantity of analysis carried out on feminine trial members. “We attempt to extrapolate [the data] and hope it additionally works on ladies,” she stated. “But we’d like extra work and analysis on ladies in several phases in life—for security causes, for analysis causes. Plus, ladies are the first shoppers for dietary supplements—why isn’t the market targeted on guaranteeing we’ve got one of the best experiences?”

While Nkrumah-Elie is probably going the primary Black lady to be a director of R&D at ChromaDex, that’s not the place her historical past making started—or the place it’s going to finish. Her profession aim is to turn into a chief scientific officer for a nutrition-focused firm. Like a stone that ripples waves by a lake, Nkrumah-Elie is decided to create a legacy of positively impacting 1 billion individuals by her work.

Kendall Ridley is senior director of communications on the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), the place she offers communications technique and public relations experience to the affiliation.

Views expressed herein are solely the topic’s and never these of ChromaDex, its associates or its companions.