Jessica Elwell, the COO and co-founder of OxEon Energy, shared about her background, explained the work she does at Oxeon, and gave career advice in an interview with SheTech Media Interns Lisa Kimball and Bree O’Connor. She shares her exciting insight and many lessons learned from her life.
Leading the Future of Aerospace and Clean Energy: Jessica Elwell’s Journey from STEM Enthusiast to Industry Trailblazer
Jessica Elwell is the COO of OxEon Energy, an aerospace and defense company headquartered in North Salt Lake that focused on making sustainable fuel, among other things, such as working with NASA to build the technology that generates oxygen on Mars. In October 2024, Elwell received the Visionary Trailblazer award by the Women Tech Council. She has both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s from Michigan Tech in chemical engineering.
We sat down with Elwell recently and asked her about her passions.
“I’ve been known to have a lot of diverse interests — maybe too many at times.”
She continued, “If you look around, [gesturing to framed pictures of her family in her office] I have a mild obsession with my children. They are number one for me.”
Elwell greatly enjoys her work in aerospace, where she has spent the last 12 years.
“As COO of OxEon, I have the opportunity to work in business system builds, workforce development and policy, with our manufacturing processes and advanced equipment development, and on our product design. I also work directly with our customers, which allows rapid feedback cycles.”
She also cares a lot about the outdoors. “I love skiing, paddle boarding, and hiking.”
Elwell appreciates how Utah’s focus on service allows even more opportunities to pursue passions. “One of my favorite things about Utah is that service core. As you succeed, you give back. It’s beyond being an expectation, it’s just what you do. That allows you to chase many passions, besides your career passions with a focus on developing your community around you.”
Despite growing up in the small town of Grafton, Wisconsin, Elwell’s interests were diverse and plentiful. She participated in as many things as she could: plays, musicals, softball, volleyball, band, and choir. “I was involved in anything they would let me be involved in. If there was an activity I found even remotely interesting, I was in. ‘Yeah, let's do that’”
Elwell was good at STEM in school, but her town offered few STEM opportunities. Initially she thought she was going to be a music teacher.
Elwell has found a lot of support in her life from her parents, mentors, and coworkers. She credits them for who she has become today. Her parents raised her to be indifferent to limits and encouraged her to try different things, even if she failed at some of them
“Sometimes balls drop. But, I have a fantastic community that helps me pick them up; there is an understanding that when you work to do hard things, failure will be a part of the process. The support to learn and improve has helped build my path. It is important to play to your strengths, and partner to your weaknesses.”
In October 2024, Elwell received the Visionary Trailblazer award from Women Tech Council. She was very surprised to receive such recognition. She credits her accomplishments to the teams with which she’s worked.
“It was very humbling. It's always a bit uncomfortable to get individual awards when you're a part of a team. I’ve had the opportunity to lead very impressive teams, and the award would not have happened without the innovation, dedication, and work of the whole.”
About the award, Elwell continued, “We are leading the way in solutions that haven't been executed before. I have had the opportunity to lead a lot of talented individuals and teams, helping to streamline the systems used to do their work, to help them either be more efficient, work better together, or to obtain skills and resources that help them meet their goals.”
Elwell thinks it’s important for people, especially those who look up to her, to recognize that she’s normal. “I think it's important to understand that everyone is moving through the day-to-day. I have a bunch of dishes in my sink right now. I'm sure my kids went to school at some point this week without all their homework in their bags. I would say most of us are doing our best, but sometimes balls drop. That’s a normal part of the process.”
Her goal is to help those she works with by providing the resources they need.
“Overall, I hope the general sentiment of my colleagues is that I am supportive of my teams, that I focus on removing hurdles and providing whatever resources are needed to pull everyone together to move towards success. That's always my goal.”
OxEon Energy builds clean energy solutions and exploits byproducts for useful applications, such as fuel and lubricants. “We're focused on building energy systems that support domestic fuel and chemical feedstock production, strengthening national energy security, advancing space exploration, and enhancing efficiency in hard-to-abate heavy industries. Technologies that we work with and systems that we're designing are focused on making fuel from carbon dioxide and water. The processes can take waste heat, CO2, and water, and use our technologies to convert that into sustainable fuels, such as jet fuel, diesel, different lubricants and waxes, or feedstocks for manufacturing processes.”
OxEon is also working on making use of gas byproducts from major CO2 waste facilities, such as those manufacturing steel and cement, putting the CO2 back into the processes and closing the carbon loop.
Established in 2017, OxEon is commissioning a system with support of the US Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office to process waste gas at a wastewater facility just down the road from their site in North Salt Lake City, near the international airport. “OxEon’s system utilizes the biogas from their waste food digester.” This facility, called Wasatch Resource Recovery, gathers waste food from local restaurants, such as Cafe Niche, Cucina Wine Bar, and Market Street Grill & Oyster Bar. They put the waste food through a digester and it off-gasses different gasses. “We take the bio-CO2 and the biomethane through our system, converting this to sustainable aviation fuel. Integrating our systems into existing plants to efficiently utilize waste streams (like CO2), providing our customers with pathways to turn their current waste into useful products onsite.”
OxEon also focuses on power and fuel production in remote locations. “You can't get more remote than Mars,” said Elwell. “But our technologies can also be used for microgrid applications, waste to fuels, power to fuels, and long duration energy storage.”
OxEon partnered with NASA to work on the groundbreaking MOXIE project (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment). “We were the first company to make a useful commodity off of the surface of Earth using what was available on site. We shipped our system to Mars, fed it the available atmosphere, and turned it into oxygen. It is the first time in human history that converting CO2 into oxygen has ever happened on Mars. Our team got to do that, which was really neat,” said Elwell.
On the MOXIE project, Elwell was the program manager, overseeing the planning and execution of the technical development plan, customer contracting, and bringing in resources.
“I also led our efforts in supply chain management, making sure our suppliers were delivering on time and to specification. It was often 80- to 100-hour work weeks. There was a lot of sacrifice from my family during that time. But overall, it was a fantastic learning experience and set my path. I had the opportunity to travel the world a bit. Working with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology taught me so much of the diligence required in Aerospace and Defense. The learning curve was steep for bringing research and development through flight qualification in only 18 months.”
We asked Elwell how she landed the COO job at OxEon. Before moving to Salt Lake City, she was working for a company in Atlanta that offered no opportunity for advancement, which forced her to start looking around. She moved to Salt Lake City to work for a small business, Technology Holding, coupled with a consulting arrangement with the other two OxEon cofounders, Dr. S. Elango Elangovan and Joseph Hartvigsen.
One day the two OxEon cofounders called her into their office. “NASA's doing a big announcement,” they told her. She replied, “No. I don't have time for this. I will read up on it later” They replied, “No. You really need to sit down and see this.”
NASA announced plans to install seven instruments on the Perseverance Rover, and the names on the announcement specifically included the company she was consulting for. Elangovan and Hartvigsen asked Elwell, “Do you want to manage it?” She asked, “What is it?” They replied, “We're going to make oxygen on Mars.” And the rest is history.
Elwell transitioned from a senior engineering role to managing a complex project. She left the group shortly after cofounding OxEon, trying to find a position that better fit her family life. She sought greater challenges and learning opportunities in the manufacturing industry. Her next opportunity was in Engineering and Quality Management for a weapons manufacturer in Salt Lake. After the pandemic, she left this company, having accomplished her goals set on hire for manufacturing systems build and efficiency gains, and needing a break. OxEon contacted during this break, asking her to return. After showing her the growth that had happened since OxEon’s formation in 2017, Elwell decided to return, this time as the COO.
Elwell thinks finding energy solutions, like the kinds of activities OxEon Energy focuses on, is very important. She wants to make a lasting impact on the world she’s handing over to her kids.
The outdoors are also very important to Elwell, and she wants to help ensure we continue to have access to them. She appreciates the positive impacts her work has, especially heavy industry and aviation. “The impact OxEon can have on industry is really exciting.”
She also finds the variety of her work to be enjoyable. “It's a challenge every day. It's pretty rare that I'm doing something that I've done before. It's nonstop growing. We always joke that there is no boring job in this company, and if you are bored, don't say it out loud; there's no shortage of things to do.”
When choosing a job, Elwell focuses on learning. She likes to take on positions that include leveraging her skills, but also require a capability that she doesn’t yet have. She thinks defining a detailed career plan when you are starting out is unnecessary. Rather, she suggests having a “long-term vision” that you can work towards through the positions you take and from experiences that you gain. “I've worked in all different industries, I've held varying positions, but I have tried to develop a core set of skills throughout my career.”
Elwell serves as a member of the board of directors for the United States Hydrogen Alliance, her third year in that position. The United States Hydrogen Alliance (USHA) is a member-based non-profit trade association dedicated to building the hydrogen economy by advancing hydrogen and fuel cell technologies across the United States. USHA serves as the national voice for the hydrogen and fuel cell industries, providing coordinated representation and advocacy to accelerate the deployment of hydrogen solutions nationwide.
“It's outside any role that I had been involved in before, with a focus on policy. It's been a fast path of learning. You definitely have different conversations with politicians than you do with technicians. It's been a good learning experience.”
Elwell works to support young women, especially through the Women Who Succeed mentorship program. Role models are especially important, so we can see that success is attainable and learn from them how to succeed.
“Examples are critical. When I was a teenager, there weren't any women I knew involved in STEM fields outside of medicine. I think it is important to seek mentors who are successfully doing what you are interested in. It helps young women to see these examples and to see it is normal for women to be involved in STEM.”
Her message to girls interested in STEM is to build a network, find support, and remember that it’s not necessary to have a clear path now, because career paths change.