Regina Polanco is Chief Executive Officer and Founder of PYRATEX® and leads the PYRATEX® team by setting the company's strategic path.
 
Born in Vienna, she has lived in several countries throughout her life — spending most of her childhood in Africa — and is trilingual in Spanish, French, and English. With these experiences along with a law degree, Ms. Polanco initiated the R&D path of PYRATEX® in 2014, collaborating with different European textile institutes with the idea of developing biobased fabrics and bringing performance and well-being to the wearer.
 
During the development phase, Ms. Polanco was a part of Fashion Fusion, an incubator program based in Berlin, powered by Deutsche Telekom and Adidas and then participated in the French program Look Forward by Showroomprivé. In 2018, after 4 years of R&D to develop the first PYRATEX® five fabrics and set up a European production supply chain, she initiated her first collaborations with brands. Since then, PYRATEX® has been featured in prominent fashion magazines worldwide, developed more than 80 fabrics, and is the supplier for brands such as Camper, PANGAIA, ASICS, GANNI, Scotch & Soda, Fiorucci, the Kering Group, amongst others.
 
At 31 years old, Ms. Polanco is an industry expert with deep knowledge in textile supply chain from fiber to garment, innovative materials scalability, sustainable practices in fashion, performance/smart textiles made with natural or biobased fibers, and intellectual property in fashion and textiles.