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. 

Mark Cooley, currently serves as Vice President of Administration and Human Resources. His areas of responsibility are finance and administrative operations. Prior to joining Stony Creek Colors in 2014, Mark worked across the natural foods manufacturing industry. Most recently (1999 through 2011) he was an owner and vice president of Elena’s Foods, a San Francisco-based manufacturer of frozen Mexican foods where he was responsible for sales and marketing as well as finance administration. During 2010, Mark and his partners sold the company to a Mumbai, India-based food manufacturing company. He is a graduate of University of California at San Diego with a BA in Chinese Studies. He also holds an MBA from Santa Clara University.

Shawn Genung, Technology Development Manager, brings the Stony Creek research team a strong background in chemical engineering, industrial engineering and business development. He has spent the past decade in research, operations and/or management level roles at technology-based startup and emerging companies, most recently as Chief Technology Officer for water protection company SecureWaters. Shawn's MBA and MS Industrial Engineering degrees focused on new product development and operations management. He uses these skills to bridge Stony Creeks chemical research with the in-field processing team to ensure Stony Creek remains the emerging leader in not only plant-based indigo but a wide range of colorants currently in the company's pipeline. 

Our team is outstanding in our field! Stay tuned on our Careers page for opportunities to join our great team working from farm to fabric, seed to shirt, to bring you the cleanest colors on earth!