Priyanka Bakaya

Priyanka Bakaya is an Australian-American entrepreneur. She founded PK Clean, a clean energy company which converts plastic waste into new products, and served as its chief executive officer.

Early years Bakaya grew up in Australia, where she attended Lauriston Girls' School. Her mother worked as a CPA and her father was a financial services entrepreneur. As a child, she developed her interest in science through interacting with Percy Kean, an inventor who developed solutions for clean energy and was close to her family.

Career After graduating from Stanford, she took a position as an energy research analyst at Lehman in New York City.

In 2012, PK Clean moved to Salt Lake City, where it set up a facility with the capacity to convert 20,000 pounds of non-recycled plastic to 60 barrels of oil each day using the depolymerization process. The company was awarded MIT's Clean Energy Prize in 2011 and third place in the Rice University Business Plan Super Bowl.

Recognition In 2011, Bakaya was the recipient of the prize for female entrepreneurs at the Rice Business Plan Competition. In December 2012, Bakaya was featured by Forbes as one of its 30 Under 30 in the Energy category. In 2013, Fortune named Bakaya as one of its 40 Under 40 to watch. In 2014, she was featured in Marie Claire as a One Woman Genius and in Elle Magazine as 12 Genius Young Women Shaping the Future. In 2015, she gave a TEDx talk on the Power of Waste. In 2016, she won money from Steve Case as part of his Rise of the Rest Tour.