40 Year Flashback from Our CEO, Reno Novak

As I reflect on the last 40 years at ProChem Inc. and my inspiration for starting a business, I find myself thinking about inspirations that shaped my decision to start a chemical company. Over the coming weeks I’ll share some pivotal moments that inspired me to start a specialty chemical business.

At Beloit College in 1982 working towards a degree in Chemistry, I was able to get a summer job working on a research project for Professor George Lisensky. George was trying to make sandwich compounds (Metallocene’s). The budget for the research work was very limited, and it was then that I learned to be resourceful and recognized the necessity of thinking outside the box. We found a potential ligand in the literature but realized the preparation required a pressure reactor which the chemistry department did not have. Our team brainstormed about different ways we could run this reaction under pressure, from pressure cookers to autoclaves in the biology lab, and finally settled on an inexpensive yet very practical solution. We convinced George that we needed to use Grolsch beer bottles, and of course we needed to empty the bottles in order to use them as pressure reactors!! Looking back at this moment I realize that the tools I learned during that summer set the stage for skills I would need in running a chemical business.

Qualities like scouring the literature, brainstorming with colleagues, chalk boarding ideas, believing it could be done, accepting failure, creative engineering, salesmanship and tenacity all became components of my personality and ProChem’s philosophy for the last 40+ years.