Our Team
Sarah Bellos, CEO and Founder, previously owned and operated a textile dye house offering garment and piece dyeing for independent fashion designers. A graduate of the Cornell University Agriculture School (2004), she has 10 years of leadership experience in the textile, agriculture and sustainability industries. Sarah developed Stony Creek Colors to help lead the sustainable transformation of the textile dye industry and build the most transparent and profitable textiles chemical company on earth. Prior to launching Stony Creek Colors, Sarah operated Artisan Natural Dyeworks, a small batch textile dye house garment and piece dyeing for independent fashion designers seeking plant-based dyes at a commercial scale. She has been a recognized leader in research efforts to bring bio-based colorant production to farmers in the Southeastern U.S. In 2015, Bellos was awarded the Young Entrepreneur Award by the AATCC, American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists, the world’s leading not-for-profit association serving textile professionals.
Brett Backer, Senior Chemical Operations Manager, is a mechanical engineer with extensive experience in chemical manufacturing, most extensively in 3M Speciality Chemicals divisions. Brett’s career has spanned all aspects of chemical manufacturing including engineering, maintenance, production operations, quality, supply chain, plant finance and, safety and regulatory compliance. He is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt with proven results in application within a chemical manufacturing environment. Brett's career includes direct experience with start-up of operations including facility engineering and construction, managing new product introductions via production scale-up of pilot programs, and establishing maintenance and operations systems. Prior to his 17 years work in Speciality Chemicals, Brett spent 11 years working as an engineering consultant in the Petroleum, Chemical and Energy industries in the Gulf Coast region. As Chemical Operations Manager at Stony Creek, he is instrumental in assisting the company in improving chemical manufacturing operations via increased production throughput and managing operational expense to volume. He is responsible for leading processing of crop biomass as well as leading design of the company’s 2016 facilities scale up plan.
Christa Bowdish, Director of Operations and Logistics, brings business operations experience from the computing, medical, and education fields as well as military operations experience. Christa’s roles include coordination of daily key physical operations and transportation as well as data collection and delivery including the establishment and maintenance of online management systems to streamline the company’s operations. Previously she served as Chief Operations Officer for Stoke Education and Assistant Director for Research and Analytics at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Christa holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and served as an Officer in the U.S. Marine Corps.
