Board of Directors

The Inventure management team has proven experience with bio-based fuel and chemical manufacturing and marketing, as well as market and product development.

Steven J Furcich, Chairman

Steven J. Furcich has over 40 years operating experience across the midstream and downstream agribusiness sectors, working with a wide range of agricultural crops, process technologies and their products.  He is an inventor on a number of issued patents involving agricultural products.  Mr. Furcich is a Partner in the Tillridge Global Agribusiness Fund, and a director of some its portfolio companies.  Additionally, Mr. Furcich is a Joint Venture Partner and Director in Wilmar Nutrition (a subsidiary of Wilmar International), and a Director at Furst-McNess (a subsidiary of Easy Bio).  Prior to Tillridge, Mr. Furcich spent over 28 years at ADM, a multinational food processing and commodities trading corporation, listed on the NYSE with a market capitalization of US$45B.  At ADM, Mr. Furcich served as Vice President & Director Group Operations for Oilseeds, and later as President of ADM’s Nutrition and Malting Divisions, and Vice President of ADM Polymer.  Mr. Furcich has a degree in Agricultural Engineering from the University of Illinois.

James Dickson Leach

Mr. Leach was formerly non-executive Director of CLP Holding, the parent company of China Light & Power Co. Ltd, a position he held since December 1978. In addition, he was formerly independent non-executive Director of Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Co. Ltd. and a Director of China Construction Bank Asia. Mr. Leach has spent most of his career in Hong Kong working on various appointments with the Kadoorie Family. During this time he was exposed to many privately held and public operations, with a later focus on the Kadoorie family’s associated publicly held corporations, including CLP Holdings, Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels, and Tai Ping Carpets. Mr. Leach was closely involved from the inception of China Light and Power’s international operations in Thailand, India and Australasia. In the early 1980s, he ran a venture capital company which invested in oil field equipment manufacturing and construction materials. Mr. Leach holds an MBA from Columbia University and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

Rahul Kale

Mr. Kale joined the Wilmar International Ltd in March 2005 and is responsible for the global biofuels and oleochemicals business of the Wilmar Group. Wilmar International has a market capitalization of some US$19B, and is a constituent stock of the Straits Times Index of the Singapore Stock Exchange. He formerly co-founded KemOleo Pte Ltd with Wilmar International. He formerly headed the oleochemicals business for Peter Cremer GMBH and was the Managing Director of Peter Cremer Singapore. Mr. Kale holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honors) in Economics and a Masters in Political Sciences from the University of Delhi.

Yong Lim Loh

Mr. Loh is a key investor in a several businesses in Asia. Over a 20 year period he built an  oil field  equipment manufacturing and service business, initially in Singapore, and latterly worldwide. This company was merged into a US company and became a leader in its field.

Koon Seng Kuok

Mr. Kuok had a career of over 23 years with the Kuok Group companies, and was involved in many diverse areas of businesses ranging from commodities, real estate, media (both television and print) to music production in various countries in the Singapore region. Since retiring from the Kuok Group, he has invested in various businesses and has an extensive network of contacts in China.

Mark Tegen

Mr. Tegen has over 25 years of petroleum, green energy and green chemical industry experience.  In 2018, he co-founded Socati Corp (publicly listed TSX:LVVEF), a cannabinoid biotechnology company producing targeted hemp seed genetics; contract row crop production in Colorado and Montana; and cannabinoid extraction and purification through continuous gradient elution and simulated moving bed chromatography.  He currently serves as Executive Director Engineering for Cleen Technology, which has transformed the continuous chromatography technology developed at Socati into an equipment and technology licensing platform for application in the worldwide medical and recreational cannabis markets.  Mr. Tegen co-founded Inventure in 2007, and served as the company’s Chief Executive Officer until 2018.  During his tenure, the company developed several patented process technologies, including Mixed Super Critical Fluid and Soap Carbonate Technology.  Before launching Inventure, he was CEO of Senergy Chemical, which he formed after licensing a novel patent to convert glycerin into propylene glycol. The technology won the 2006 Presidential Green Chemistry Award. Prior to forming Senergy, Mr. Tegen was President of Pacific Fluids LLC, the largest specialty chemical manufacturer, terminal in the Pacific Northwest. During his term with Senergy Chemical and Pacific Fluids. Mr. Tegen oversaw the marketing, sales, product development, and manufacturing of petrochemical products for customers including Octagon Process, Boeing, Castrol, British Petroleum, Kaiser Aluminum, and others. In addition, he has also developed or co-developed over 50 patents and patent applications.  He received his degree in Business from the University of Washington.

Way Cheng Chai

Ms Chai’s career spans over 35  years, reflecting a unique combination of finance and investment banking advisory work with the executive responsibility of a major corporation. While working in the investment banking industry – largely based in Hong Kong with Schroders and Merrill Lynch – Ms. Chai was responsible for fund raising (equity and equity linked issues), IPOs, M&As, corporate restructuring and general advisory transactions for local and multinational corporations in a variety of industries in North and South East Asia. She also served as Finance Director of SCMP Group, a Hong Kong listed corporation which is one of the largest English language publishing and print media companies in the region.. Ms. Chai is a chartered accountant by profession with an honors degree in Finance from Sheffield University, England.

Ryan Long – Chief Executive Officer

Ryan Long started working for Inventure in the early part of 2009. Initially, he was working in the research and development department on the early stages of the algae to jet fuel grant Inventure received through the Department of Defense (DoD). After this initial work, he became more involved in the organization as a Reactor Engineer and became integral to the development of Inventure’s Mixed Supercritical Fluid platform which was the selected technology by the DoD for the advanced stages of the project. In later years, Ryan became involved with different applications of this platform, one of which was associated with Wilmar International in a specific application around the isolation and purification of nutraceuticals, including methyl esters. In early 2016, he was promoted to Engineering Manager and managed a staff of over twenty chemical engineers and chemists in a variety of different projects (including specialty chemical manufacturing). His work here included the research, engineering, and successful plant commissioning of Inventure’s first technology commercialization at a 10,000 Ton/yr scale. In 2018, Ryan became Chief Technology Officer, where he continued to develop patents for Inventure as he became more integrated on Inventure’s different profit centers (licensing, sponsored research, manufacturing, engineering services, etc). In December of 2019, he was promoted to CEO of Inventure. Ryan is committed to helping Inventure’s clients find solutions that meet their environmental sustainability goals.