Aqua Science Owner Iwona Evans Survived A Career Pivot And Pandemic Launch

Iwana Evans founded Aqua Science in 2020.

When Iwona Evans moved to the United States from Szczecin, Poland, in 2000, she expected to be here for only a year.

Twenty-four years, three college degrees, and lots of experience as a finance executive later, she’s running a biotech company that aims to ensure humans, animals, and plants have safe and clean water and helps clients meet stricter environmental compliance rules.

She started Newark-based Aqua Science in early 2020. The company develops and manufactures custom reagents, including its core technology, bioluminescent reagents, which are used to test the toxicity of water.

“Starting a business right before the pandemic hit, it was scary, it was tough,” said Evans, who ultimately won an EDGE Grant a year later from the Delaware Division of Small Business that Evans has said was a significant turning point in the company’s growth, But before that, she added, “I felt like there’s so many people depending on me, so I can’t just give up. I always say that failure is not an option.”

Among the problems the Aqua Science team was facing in the midst of the pandemic was trying to ship its bacteria amid shipping delays.

“Shipping suddenly took a lot longer, and the product has to be frozen and shipped in a cooler, so the transit time cannot be too long,” she said in an interview with the Delaware Prosperity Partnership in 2022. “Our scientists did some additional work, and we were able to make it more stable so the bacteria would survive a longer transit time.”

It was a long road getting to that point.

After moving to the States, Evans started taking English classes at Delaware Technical Community College to learn the language and earned a scholarship to Goldey-Beacom College where she studied international business management.

She planned to return to Poland after graduating in 2005. But plans change.

“But before I left, I applied for an MBA at the University of Delaware, and I got a full scholarship, so I couldn’t waste the opportunity,” she said, “So I went to Poland for three months, came back, and graduated from UD in 2007.”

Evens spent six years at MIDI, a Newark-based biotech company and earned her second master’s degree from Goldey-Beacom in 2009 for management, and then worked as a financial controller at Modern Water for eight years.

Now, she’s working on providing clean water and hopes more countries will pay attention to the importance of clean water and the negative impacts of toxic water. As the issue becomes worse, she wants Aqua Science’s technology to have a positive impact in providing safe water to all living organisms.

Iwona Evans pictured on the far right. (Photo courtesy of Iwona Evans)

She said countries like Chile, Brazil, South Africa – and hopefully more – are working on legislation to ensure people can access safe water, adding that Mexico is one of the countries that added legislation for wastewater by testing toxicity in wastewater using the company’s technology.

“We also do R&D [research and development] work,” Evans said. “We finished, successfully, Phase One of a federal grant. We are working on Phase Two, essentially developing a rapid test kit for PFAs, the forever chemicals, which is a huge problem now, and we submitted the Phase Two proposal for the grant in mid-July, so we are waiting now on this.”

In June, Aqua Science’s equipment won a first-place award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“Eighty percent of our revenue comes from outside of the U.S.,” she pointed out, crediting Export Delaware, an office within the Delaware Department of State that helps small- and medium-sized businesses grow and reach new markets overseas.

She said it would be almost impossible for a small business like hers to have outreach to regions like Southeast Asia or Africa without the partnership.

She’s taken her products to places like the Philippines, Dominican Republic, and Thailand, and will be traveling to Mexico City and Italy in the upcoming months for trade missions.

There are two sides to being a female business owner.

“When you meet people and it’s like, wow, they’re impressed, especially when they find out that I’m a finance person, I’m not a scientist, and I can go and promote the company, and I’m the one who travels and speaks to scientists,” Evans said.

Still, she said, there’s a prejudice against women, especially when they’re relatively young.

“In certain parts of the world, you meet with men, and they are skeptical about it, so it’s still fighting this perception that you’re young, you’re a woman, how can we prove ourselves?” she said.

She thinks her business has proven itself since its inception four years ago.

Most of the company’s employees are women.

“Being a small company also makes a difference,” she said. “We talk to each other, we run ideas by each other, and one of the things that is part of our philosophy from the beginning was I don’t babysit my employees. I don’t look over their shoulders.”

Evans said they’re experts in what they do, so she’s constantly asking them for advice and has created an environment of transparency and openness.

She’s inspired every day by her two young children, showing them that anything is possible and that hard work pays off.

“You just don’t quit; you learn, and one of the things I always tell my kids is when you fail, you learn,” she said. “That’s a lesson. You get up, and you do it again, and you do it, and you just keep going, and I have the mindset where I’m always thinking there’s so many people depending on me. It’s the employees, it’s my family.”