Rita E. Email & Phone Number

Rita E. is a Vice President of Innovation at K18 Hair. Colleagues describe her as "Rita El-Khouri is a true “unicorn” innovator – a “one of a kind” scientific leader with proven success in a wide variety of industries and technical domains. Rita has consistently demonstrated her scientific expertise, impactful leadership, passion for innovation and entrepreneurial spirit to deliver truly breakthrough innovations. Her entre into the startup world is an exciting step, as she will lean on her insatiable curiosity, focus and drive to develop products that consumers need & love, which will no doubt lead to business success and growth. Quite importantly, Rita is an approachable, creative & thoughtful leader who has great empathy for others (including consumers!). Collectively, Rita is top talent in the scientific community, is up for any challenge and delivers results. I hope to have the opportunity to collaborate with her again! " and "Dr. Rita El-Khouri is one of the most brilliant scientific minds with whom I have had the pleasure of working. Rita has a passion for using first principle scientific concepts on Research and Development (R&D) problems to transform them into concrete business solutions. I saw Dr. Rita in action while at Mondelez International with her research on gum base polymer systems. Rita used her extensive polymer and materials science background to develop novel solutions to two complicated gum base and confectionery product needs. In addition, Rita also worked cross-functionally with procurement, supply chain, process engineering and manufacturing to scale up and commercialize new gum base raw materials. In the two years that I worked with Rita, I was continuously impressed by her drive and her work ethic. Dr. Rita doesn't stop until she's solved a problem or has developed a clear reason for why the objective can't be achieved. This is rare in the industrial world where researchers often just "move on to the next thing". Rita ensures that the business understands what is and what isn't possible with the current technology set. She also documents her findings extensively and truly creates platforms upon which future research avenues can be created or where other researchers can know that an areas wasn't a fruitful pathway with the technology on hand at the time. This separates Rita from her peers and truly demonstrates the depth of her ability as a research leader and technology developer. "