Laura Capellucci, MBA ’17
Sustainability Lead, BioLife Plasma Services, Takeda
Laura Cappellucci (nee Adelman) graduated from MIT Sloan with a Sustainability Certificate eight years ago, but that event did not end her ties to the Sustainability Initiative. Rather, it marked the beginning of a lasting relationship with global impact.
“Honestly, I feel like I never left Sloan,” says Laura, who maintains strong connections with MIT students, researchers, and alumni—giving back as much as she gets in return.
Laura began her career in clean energy marketing at BlueWave Solar. When she decided to pivot to corporate sustainability, it was MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative alum Rich Wilner, MBA ’19, vice president of transformation and sustainability at BioLife Plasma Services, part of Takeda, who helped her make the transition.
“When I interviewed with Rich for the role at Takeda, we immediately had so much in common,” says Laura, who is now the sustainability lead for BioLife Plasma Services. For the past five years, she and her team have been developing and implementing BioLife's sustainability strategy, working to help Takeda achieve its Planet Pillar goals of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in Takeda’s operations by 2035 and zero-waste-to-landfill by 2030.
Mentoring the Next Generation
As an MIT student, Laura was co-president of the Clean Energy Club and lived in Nairobi, Kenya, for her summer internship with a solar microgrid company. Even though it was years ago, she still recalls the key role those experiences played in preparing her for the real world. Because she wants to make sure the next generation has the same opportunities she had, she has hired and mentored two MIT summer sustainability interns at BioLife. In the same vein, almost every year since she graduated, Laura has hosted an S-Lab team— two at BlueWave Solar and five at Takeda.
“It’s nice to have the outside perspective of the students on how to look at our challenges and how to solve them,” she says. “The students are not afraid to be creative. And they’re able to look beyond our internal barriers and biases, and because of them, we’re able to think bigger and brainstorm more broadly.”
It’s been important to my department and me to have this connection with MIT.
One S-Lab project resulted, indirectly, in the installation of an on-site waste remediation system at BioLife’s Testing Lab in Hoover, Alabama. Another is a project that Laura and her team continue to reference—a rigorous physical audit a student team conducted in 2023 of non-hazardous waste streams.
“We are still acting on the outcomes of this project and hope to have additional learnings to share in the coming months,” says Laura, who looks to not only improve sustainable operations at BioLife, but also across the healthcare industry. “The studies on our wastestream could be informative to hospitals and other health-related sites,” she adds. “We’d like to amplify and share our findings with others, for a broader global impact.”
Small Changes, Big Impact
Laura Cappelllucci speaking at the ribbon cutting of the installation of a waste remediation system at the BioLife Testing Lab in Hoover, Alabama, March 2025
In 2022, Laura broadened her impact by collaborating with MIT’s Christopher Knittel, associate dean for Climate and Sustainability, Rich Wilner, and others on a sustainability research project. The team conducted three randomized control trials at BioLife’s network of U.S. plasma donation centers, with the aim of promoting sustainable behaviors in a workplace setting. Specifically, the study examined recycling practices, waste reduction and energy usage. The findings—which Laura and MIT graduate research assistant Lan Ha presented at the 2023 Behavior, Energy, and Climate Change conference—provide significant information on the effects of promoting sustainable behaviors in workplace settings, not only at BioLife, but also across other industries.
For the foreseeable future, Laura plans to maintain and even deepen her connection with MIT and the Sustainability Initiative.
“It’s been important to me and my department to have this connection,” she says. “I could see pursuing more opportunities to engage in research, as we did with Professor Knittel, and do more assessments that we can share with our larger industry community—which I think is best done with a well-known, rigorous academic partner like MIT.”
