The Innovator Awards<\/a> celebrate Northeastern students, graduates and affiliated entrepreneurs making an impact in health, technology, sustainability and social innovation. Over the past five years, Women Who Empower has invested more than $1.8 million in winners building and scaling their ventures.<\/p>\n\u201cI think that award is so great because of that emphasis on women. I\u2019ve witnessed a lot of women in my network deflect recognition or not emphasize themselves ahead of others,\u201d she says. \u201cThe idea that this award is really focused on that is special.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kelp on her mind<\/p>\n
Coulombe McGovern first learned about kelp farming in Maine, where she grew up, while reading on a plane.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew nothing about it, except for the fact that I really liked what it was doing for the fishing communities in Maine and the commercial fishing industry,\u201d she says. \u201cThey could leverage their know-how, their equipment and their off-season to drive additional revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Kelp](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Kelp1400.jpg\")
Maine now leads among U.S. states in farmed seaweed production. Getty Images<\/p>\n
She admired the \u201ccreative hack,\u201d says Coulombe McGovern, whose background is in sales, marketing and product management for consumer packaged goods and software solutions. But she wasn\u2019t sure how she could get involved.<\/p>\n
As the industry took off \u2014 Maine now leads among U.S. states in farmed seaweed production \u2014 Coulombe McGovern began thinking about a high-volume kelp application beyond food.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a new mom, she worried about microplastic contamination and wondered whether seaweed could replace crude oil in products such as water-soluble films used for detergent pods.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s actually been, historically, very much promoted as biodegradable, which new research is showing that that\u2019s not the case,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Working with a polymer chemistry scientist, Coulombe McGovern helped develop the first prototype \u2014 in a home kitchen.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s when we decided to go at it more full time,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Roux Founder Residency<\/p>\n
At the same time, Coulombe McGovern entered Northeastern\u2019s 2025 Roux Founder Residency program on the Portland, Maine, campus. The one-year program helps startups refine their business models and raise capital.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Roux and MTI are really the main reason that we can exist as a company right now, because the access to the capital was super flexible and non-diluted,\u201d Coulombe McGovern says. \u201cThey wanted to fund people that were taking risks and starting something new.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Hands](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/DirigoSeaFarm-17.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/DirigoSeaFarm-36.jpg\")
\nDirigo Sea Farm extracts different compounds out of Maine-grown kelp, mixes them into a slurry-like consistency and turns that into rolls of thin, flexible film. Photos by Jill Hoyle<\/p>\n
With a small team, she was able to set up a lab and start piloting the first version of their product.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe basically did everything in that lab and then in a warehouse setup for some of our messier and bigger-scale manufacturing pilots,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Getting into a big boys\u2019 club<\/p>\n
Dirigo Sea Farm uses Maine-grown seaweed and extracts different compounds out of it, mixes it into a slurry-like consistency and turns that into rolls of thin, flexible film.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of know-how. There\u2019s a lot of testing, research that\u2019s gone into how we can get that to work and be true,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
The company holds a provisional patent on the entire process and end material of the film and another provisional patent for a different but similar application.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, the company has its first customer \u2014 a laundry and dish pod manufacturer. The team is racing to fulfill the initial purchase order before the end of the year, with the final product being co-manufactured in Chicago.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re producing all of the inputs to the film and then they\u2019re creating reams of the film,\u201d Coulombe McGovern says.<\/p>\n
Next year, the company plans to invest in a larger filtration device to boost processing capacity and serve more customers. Other potential clients are interested in carrier film applications that deliver something like a detergent solution and dissolve in the process.<\/p>\n
Dirigo Sea Farm aims to produce nearly 40,000 pounds of the film next year and triple that output soon after.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter we nail this launch with this one customer, it will be about how fast we can acquire others,\u201d Coulombe McGovern says.<\/p>\n
To make its materials compatible with existing plastics machinery, the company\u2019s film must withstand high heat and pressure while remaining water-soluble.<\/p>\n
A small kelp farm for fun \u2014 and R&D<\/p>\n
Last year, Coulombe McGovern also leased a 400-square-foot ocean plot to grow kelp.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s basically an underwater clothesline,\u201d she says. \u201cA piece of rope flows between two major anchor buoys 10 feet below the sea level, and you just seed the seaweed onto that rope.\u201d<\/p>\n
Farmers seed kelp spores in the fall and harvest in early spring. This year, she says, the company harvested about 1,000 to 1,500 pounds of kelp \u2014 enough for experiments and material testing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just bring it into the lab when we need some, and then we run different tests on it. And that\u2019s really what it\u2019s meant for \u2014 R&D, so that we can have a stockpile that we can pull from,\u201d Coulombe McGovern said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In March 2024, a breast cancer diagnosis abruptly put Alexa Coulombe McGovern\u2019s life on hold. The cause of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[114,4692,69824,85,69625,46,12864,4319,16057,1116,69825,1872,3594,69826],"class_list":["post-106591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-entrepreneur","tag-founder-residency-program","tag-il","tag-innovator-awards","tag-israel","tag-kelp","tag-manufacturing","tag-microplastics","tag-plastic","tag-roux-institute-at-northeastern-university","tag-startup","tag-sustainability","tag-women-who-empower"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}