RNA can help tackle some of humanity’s greatest problems: Feeding everyone and keeping them healthy while protecting the planet.

Our breakthrough RNA platform allows us to quickly and efficiently develop and make a wide pipeline of solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems.

For human health, this pipeline includes vaccines for Covid and shingles and a gene therapy for sickle cell anemia.

For plant and animal health, this pipeline includes solutions to protect bees and stop fungal pathogens that often rot fruit like strawberries and grapes.

Our Colorado potato beetle product is expected to be approved in 2022, and we have a pipeline of 13 more products for human, plant, and animal health.

ESG responsibilities are core to GreenLight’s purpose

We harness the power of biology to meet the needs of the human race, plants, animals, and the planet.

Our investors, partners, and staff understand this is our purpose and know that we will always look to deliver benefits and returns that are sustainable. 

We are a team dedicated to solving some of the world’s largest problems by delivering on the full potential of RNA through our innovative platform and products. Given the scale of the challenges we face, this is the only path that is both responsible and rewarding. 

Our products aim to address some of humanity’s greatest problems: Feeding everyone and keeping them healthy while protecting the planet.

  • For food safety and security, the products we are developing aim for sustainable food production through highly selective RNA-based bio-fungicides and bio-insecticides. These solutions are designed to meet both the needs of farmers and consumers by offering effective pest management with a favorable environmental safety profile.
  • For human health, we aim to achieve equitable global access to vaccines and therapies. The Covid-19 pandemic has shown that donor-reliant vaccine distribution models will not enable global health security to be achieved. Furthermore, even outside of a global emergency situation, vaccines and therapies designed and developed for local medical needs are sorely missing, especially in remote or poor communities. Our messenger RNA platform aims to deliver a safe and efficacious response to vaccine and therapeutic needs globally, in a rapid, scalable, and affordable manner.

GreenLight’s product pipeline for agriculture, human health, and animal health is powered by a development process and proprietary platform that allows us to design and manufacture RNA-based products at a broad range of scales in a fast and cost-effective manner, making these solutions rapidly accessible. 

For agricultural products, GreenLight’s manufacturing plant in Rochester, New York, has the ability today to produce 0.5 tons/year of RNA. To our knowledge, this is the largest RNA facility by volume in the world.

We believe in doing the right thing to meet our environmental, social, and governance responsibilities.

As a public benefit corporation, we are structured and governed to prioritize our community, employees, partners, and society generally, as well as shareholders.
Underlying everything we do as a publicly traded public benefit corporation is a commitment to Environmental, Social, and Governance responsibilities. GreenLight supports the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

GreenLight's contribution to the SDGs
GreenLight’s contribution to the SDGs

Environment

  • Our agricultural products degrade quickly in the environment without detrimental impact to the soil, water, or the ecosystems dependent upon them.
  • We design solutions to target only the pest that the farmer needs to control  without harming other organisms, particularly beneficial insects and pollinators, such as honeybees
  • We aim to provide effective bio-control of the microorganisms responsible for crop losses, estimated at around 30% of the world’s food supply, by developing a control for fungal pathogens.
  • We are developing RNA solutions to protect honeybees from the Varroa destructor mite. Honeybees are responsible for the pollination of more than a third of all the food we eat and a little more than 80% of the fruits, vegetables, and tree nuts crucial to feeding the planet nutritiously.

How we operate in a sustainable manner:

  • The RNA we use for our agricultural products has been produced with yeast recycled from the agriculture and food industries, using our proprietary technology.
  • We will be analyzing our policies on waste management, energy consumption, and internal operations to ensure we operate as a company aligned with our goal of protecting humans, animals, and the environment.

Social

To address unmet medical needs of underserved populations and to prepare for future pandemics, we work with every part of the world to advance the discovery, development, scale-up, and manufacturing of vaccines and therapeutics.

We aim to make RNA products more accessible to low- and middle-income countries and believe that local needs are best addressed when we partner locally from the very beginning of the product research and development process.

  • We partnered with Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s biggest vaccine producer, to focus on providing vaccines for low- and middle-income countries. Our technology transfer will allow SII to produce GreenLight’s messenger RNA vaccines and therapeutics in India.
  • IAVI, a nonprofit scientific research organization, will advance our messenger RNA COVID-19 vaccine candidate in a Phase I clinical trial with research partners in sub-Saharan Africa.
  • We actively seek to partner with local companies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to advance equitable access to messenger RNA vaccines and therapeutics targeting regionally prevalent diseases. These partnerships aim to develop skills and capabilities to research, develop, make, and commercialize messenger RNA products.
  • In our plant health development process, we are committed to engaging with local agencies, agricultural partners, and academic institutions to create solutions to protect regional crops from relevant pests.
  • We are establishing a global network of partnerships and workforce development to advance research and manufacturing of effective and selective solutions targeting local pests.
  • We continuously work to improve our representation of gender, race, and ethnicity at all levels, including our board, VP, and executive levels, and our efforts to date include:
  • As of March 2022, 45% of our full-time employees self-identify as female and 45% of full-time employees self-identify as a non-Caucasian racial or ethnic group.
  • 50% of our Executive team members and Senior Vice Presidents are female.
  • 40% of our Executive team identifies as a non-Caucasian racial or ethnic group (Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian or Native Hawaiian, other Pacific Islander, or two or more races or ethnic groups).
  • Women make up 40% of the C-Suite at GreenLight compared to the industry average of 24%
  • We regularly measure and share with employees information about our gender pay gap and company statistics.
  • Our employee-run resources groups focus on common priorities and areas of interest, including the LGBTQ+ community, women, community service and fundraising, wellness, and equity, diversity & inclusion.
  • The growth in representation of female and racial and ethnic minority employees at GreenLight has outpaced our overall employee population growth; our employee base has increased 61% since March 2021, whereas there was a 66% and 80% increase in representation of women and ethnic and racial minorities, respectively.
  • 46% of our employees in Research and Scientist positions are female, when women make up only 28% of the STEM workforce.

Governance

  • GreenLight went public as one of the world’s first publicly traded public benefit corporations, or PBCs. A PBC is a corporation established to prioritize community, employees, partners, and society generally as well as shareholders.
  • GreenLight’s board of directors is diverse. More than 42% of GreenLight’s board is racially and ethnically diverse—a percentage double that of the S&P 500’s 21%.[1] Additionally, 30% of our non-executive directors are women and 5 of the 7 members of our board represent members of the Asian-American, Mexican-American, Black/African American, and LGBTQ+ communities.
  • We are committed to ensuring best practices are followed when it comes to fair business arrangements with our partners and suppliers, specifically highlighting our priority of ensuring favorable arrangements for low- and middle-income partners.

Awards 

Forward Fooding’s FoodTech 500 list ranked GreenLight at #71. Described as “the world’s first definitive list of the global entrepreneurial talent at the intersection between food, technology, and sustainability,” the award recognizes GreenLight for commitment to three UN SDGs sustainable development goals (SDGs):

  • zero hunger
  • responsible consumption and production
  • sustainable life on land

The Boston Globe ranked GreenLight as 24th of 40 Top Places to Work in Massachusetts in the 2021 large company category from an employee-based survey.

We were also recognized with a cultural excellence award for our diversity, equity, and inclusion practices