About NELIXIA
Latin America is home to an immense biodiversity, diverse cultures, traditional communities and their heritage, but despite huge potential, local natural raw materials haven´t been widely developed.
Founding our company, our dream was to bring back value to this fertile region, by developing natural ingredients for the fragrance, flavors, aromatherapy and spices industry.
When we started producing our first essential oils in 2010, we set out an ambitious goal to do things differently by putting sustainability at the heart of our operations. It’s been exciting to see the reach and positive impact we managed, and we are continuously moving forward through this journey by developing a larger range of natural ingredients which will scale up our positive impact in producing communities and for the environment.
We are also invested by a mission, the mission to give purpose to the whole value chain, by showing the world where do the raw materials they use in their products every day come from, on one side the amazing ancestral know-how and breathtaking nature surroundings, but also the toughness of the working conditions.
Give purpose by allowing our customers and their clients to engage and commit with us in these value chains, through respect, empowerment, regenerative agriculture, poverty eradication.
Give purpose as we are all part of this story and it is our common responsibility to make things right, even if it is the hard way, but it is the only way.
Purpose definitely starts at the source, so that our children can one day have access to the same emotions we are feeling in contact with those ingredients.
Our team
Elisa Aragon
Co-founder and CEO
Co-founder and CEO of NELIXIA, Elisa Aragon has been devoting her energy since 2009 to the creation of a new standard in sustainable and ethical sourcing. Elisa bridges the gap between the Western world and Latin America to apply the excellence of her clients to the reality of the field. As a result, her company writes and implements its own certified sustainable methodology, and places social and environmental aspects at the heart of all operations.
With a scientific background, Elisa completed her studies in chemistry at the prestigious perfume school, ISIPCA in Versailles. She worked for two years at Firmenich, a world leader in perfumes. After a master's degree in entrepreneurship and innovation at ESCP in Paris, she founded NELIXIA.
Jean-Marie
Maizener
Co-founder and COO
Jean-Marie Maizener is the co-founder of NELIXIA. He is from Paris, a Centrale Paris engineer and has worked in strategic consulting with Bain & Co., and finance for the Carlyle Group prior to meeting Elisa. With her vision to bring social consciousness and sustainability to her part of the world, together Elisa and Jean-Marie created NELIXIA. Jean-Marie is a self-proclaimed explorer, pushing the boundaries of what’s expected within the existing market and seeking new, innovative origin species to bring to all of Latam, generating income and biodiversity.
Marc Fournier
Co-founder, Chairperson and Advisor
Marc dedicated his career to founding and growing companies to become world leaders in their domain. He is particularly proud of being a part of NELIXIA and having catered to the high demands of industrialization while creating a new standard in sustainable and ethical sourcing. Marc helps NELIXIA in developing and implementing the company’s strategy.
Marc holds degrees in Political Science, International Relations and Business from Tufts University, ESCP Business School and the Institut Etudes Politique in Paris. Additionally, he has published three books and is the Dean of a Maters Program at ESCP Business School.
Fredy Rodriguez
Sourcing Business
Development Director
Fredy Rodriguez has a large experience in building agroforestry systems resilient against climate change, community organization, recovery of degraded soils and waste management. He has a large experience across Latin America in different crops and wild collections.
His large connaissance in agronomy, his commitments to ethics and his sustainable approach makes him the best in developing new ingredients at NELIXIA.
Previously, he has worked as a specialist consultant in agroforestry value chains for the German cooperation GIZ ,USAID, Swiss Cooperation and COOP.
He was also a former certification Coordinator for ECOM Trading in Honduras and El Salvador.
Victoria Soerensen
Sustainable Sourcing Director
Victoria is a Forest Engineer, with more than 10 years of experience in the creation and execution of forest management plans. She has also a large experience in environmental management analysis, specialized in solid waste management for the creation of regulatory frameworks for public policies.
Sustainable practices are into Victoria’s DNA.
She is very talented in creating programs and is ensuring the implementation of NELIXIA’s sustainable methodology throughout all NELIXIA’s ingredients value chains.
Chloé Dengel
Sales Manager
Chloé is Belgian-English and has over 10 years of experience in Europe as Project Manager and Commercial Engineer in Pharmaceutical companies such as Novartis, GSK and Baxter, before moving to Guatemala.
Quadrilingual and naturally goal and customer-oriented, she cherishes building a special relationship with each one of NELIXIA’s international clients and is committed to the fulfillment of their needs and projects.
Perfectly aligned with NELIXIA’s values and mission, she takes great proud in representing a company that not only provides sustainable quality products but also sets the wellbeing of the local producing communities and workers at the center of its interests.
Florence Geny
CFO
As CFO of Nelixia, Florence brings extensive international experience in Finance & Corporate Development, having worked in M&A, Investment management and Financial planning at leading international operators in the Energy and Agri-business sectors in three different continents.
She met Elisa and Jean-Marie while living in Guatemala and was quickly seduced by Nelixia’s innovative vision of becoming a world leading supplier of certified products anchored in its own full-fledged sustainability methodology.
Florence holds a MSc in Business Administration & Management from HEC Paris, and a MSc in Business Law from the University of Paris-Saclay.
Joel Bethancourt
Human Ressources Director
Joel is the Human Ressources Director, responsible for deploying NELIXIA’s sustainable vision in HR which is integreated in each division of the company.
He designs and implements HR innovatives practices to increase employee performance and efficiency to create motivated and engaged staff aligned with NELIXIA Group strategy.
Joel is passionate for the organizational culture and change management to drive performance and built organization with purpose.
Joel has over 10 years of work experience in the HR field in companies such as Deloitte and other big firms and multinationals.
Our Process
+500 tons of waste treated every year.
Carbon 0: carbon neutral or even carbon negative.
20% of our energy need and growing.
Positive impact on greenhouse effect.
Our Solution
We decided to invest in a biodigester, to digest our biomass.
Every day, we add several tons of distilled biomass to our digestor, that we agitate and heat (with our condenser water), to generate the production of biogas which is a mix of methane and CO2.
To improve efficiency, and have more positive impact in our region, we also collect cow manure and other wastes from local farms that we add to the mix.
Methane is then used in a dedicated boiler to produce our own renewable energy for distillation.
The Sub-product of this process is an amazing fertilizer, that we distribute back to our producing communities.
info@nelixia.com