Lubrizol Corp., a Berkshire Hathaway company based in Wickliffe, Ohio, U.S.A., and one of the largest fuel and lubricant additive companies in the world, has formed a new Lubrizol Corporate Ventures Group, which will be charged with growing the company in adjacent markets. 

This group will be led by Deb Langer as senior vice president, Corporate Ventures, and includes innovators in Lubrizol’s walls working in partnership with inventors, start-ups and strategic minds and organisations to build new business opportunities that leverage the company’s strengths and enable sizable growth in new areas. 

Driven by a clear understanding of the markets across these opportunities, the Corporate Ventures team will work to address the unmet needs of those markets, utilising Lubrizol’s extensive resources and expertise to develop, test, commercialise, and scale business opportunities to deliver sustainable growth.

Throughout her Lubrizol career, Langer has been in the forefront of growth and innovation, including imagining and building the origins of what is now Lubrizol Life Science, a business producing innovative science for beauty, home and healthcare applications. Most recently, she served as corporate vice president, Mergers and Acquisitions and Consumer and Market Insights, and has held a variety of positions throughout the company spanning business management and technology leadership roles.

The company also has appointed Elizabeth (Beth) Grove as chief sustainability officer. Sustainability continues to be an underpinning of Lubrizol’s strategy and serves as a vital driver to the long-term health and growth of the organisation. In her new role, Grove will propel the company’s broad focus on sustainability, including environmental, social and governance disciplines, as well as oversee government affairs and community engagement. She will continue to serve as president of The Lubrizol Foundation.

Since joining Lubrizol in 2007, Grove has served in various roles, including global director of Sustainability and Compliance for Lubrizol Life Science and as the company’s Chief Litigation Counsel. She joined Lubrizol from the Federal Trade Commission, where she was a trial attorney in the Bureau of Consumer Protection. Prior to that, Grove was a litigation attorney with Jones Day.

Grove succeeds Julie Edgar as chief sustainability officer, who will take on an exciting new opportunity as vice president, Transportation, in the Lubrizol Additives business.

In this role, Edgar will be accountable for growth in Lubrizol Additives’ Transportation business. During her 25 years at Lubrizol, Edgar has held a number of technology management positions across the business in Asia, Europe and North America. As Lubrizol’s first chief sustainability officer, she helped to fully embed sustainability across the business, including how the company innovates, designs and produces products. This focus will be critical as Edgar advances Lubrizol’s mission to help the world move cleaner, enabling a 50% reduction in global vehicle emissions by 2040.