Emilie Bodoin, founder of Pure Lithium, has always been someone who saw obstacles as doors that are waiting to be pushed. It was her obsession with solving long-term problems that led her to create Pure Lithium in 2020, a company that is set on changing how the world produces and stores energy.
Today, Emilie is the founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer whose vision is transforming the future of clean energy. Her journey into the world of battery technology and materials sciences was not an easy one especially because she was mostly the only woman in the room. While this meant having perspectives and ideas that are different from others, it also meant questioning why things are being done a certain way. She challenged assumptions, pushed harder to be heard, built an inclusive team and backed up her ideas through data and execution.
Over the years, that determination has earned her five granted patents, thirteen pending applications, and a career with more than a decade in lithium metal anode and next-generation battery development.
Before founding her company, Emilie had already built a career in the finance and science industry. She has served as the Chief Technology Officer for G.C. Andersen Partners, a boutique investment bank, then transitioned to energy research where she led a lithium metal production project at Argonne National Laboratory as a Principal Investigator. She later served as Entrepreneur in Residence for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. Now, she sits on the board of the Sadoway Labs Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to deep decarbonization, which secured early backing from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
Working in an industry where women receive just 2% of venture capital funding, Emilie quickly learned that in order to get a mere shot with investors, she had to be ten times prepared and better than the competition. She admitted that the pressure to overachieve mixed with a perfectionist streak, has forced her to invent her own path without a blueprint. This had also made her think differently about fundraising, innovation and leadership.
At Pure Lithium, even in its earliest research and development stage, Emilie has built a work environment where unconventional ideas were welcomed and encouraged. She believes breakthroughs can only happen if creativity and inclusion sit at the heart of the team and the results have proven her right several times.
Despite her focus on patents and technology, her motivation is on the human impact of clean energy. To her, energy is about the people and not just science alone. She is convinced that clean and accessible power has the ability to change lives, create equity, and reshape entire economies. That belief is what guides her and has kept her moving even through inevitable setbacks.
Moving forward, Emilie is most excited about the role women will play in the future of clean energy not as outliers, but as important leaders. She imagines a future where women are as present in policy boards and venture capital firms as they are in labs and engineering teams, with the opportunity to influence every decision on how new technologies are developed and deployed.
If she could leave one message for the next generation of women who dream of leading in science and technology, it would be this: do not wait for approval. Breakthroughs belong to those who trust their instincts, take risks, and refuse to hold themselves back until someone else says yes. Leadership, she believes, is not a popularity contest, it is a test of courage, clarity, and conviction.
Emilie encourages younger women to be bold and seek out mentors and allies, and to always remember that the obstacles they face can become the very things that influence their leadership.