Legena Henry

Dr. Legena Henry is the founder and CEO of Rum and Sargassum Inc. and a former renewable energy researcher and lecturer from the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill. Trained at MIT, she invented and patented a process that converts invasive sargassum seaweed and rum-distillery wastewater into clean biogas vehicle fuel — leading the world's first team to power vehicles and charge electric cars using sargassum-derived biogas. Under her leadership, Rum and Sargassum drove the world's first sargassum-powered vehicles, electric cars charged using renewable natural gas from Sargassum Seaweed and developed concepts for 250 kW and 8 MW Sargassum biogas facilities in Barbados. Her work has been featured in MIT Technology Review, Harvard Business Review, and Economist Impact, and she has presented at the United Nations. A passionate advocate for circular economies and small-island climate resilience, Dr. Henry works to turn coastal pollution and industrial waste into energy independence, green jobs, and sustainable development across the Caribbean and beyond.