Meet The Co-Founders, Pt. 1: Sean Carroll
As an avid entrepreneur and researcher, Sean Carroll has a drive for developing novel therapies in veterinary care. When Sean was a student at Wayne State University (WSU) in Detroit, he and his co-founder, Ramy Habib, came up with the original idea that would one day be HoneyCure. Sean’s experiences in healthcare and education in engineering are essential in the creation of this product.
Sean attended WSU where he graduated with a Bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering and later a Master’s of Science in Biomedical Engineering. In 2015, Sean met Ramy during a biomedical engineering internship at Beaumont. Together, they took a clinical immersion class through WSU in the Detroit Medical Center (DMC), which gave them direct experience with medical devices in clinical environments. Seeing the trauma that people experienced while working within the DMC burn unit inspired Sean and Ramy to design a better burn care treatment. They started with the idea of using honey for medicinal purposes, which is Ramy’s expertise, and making it more effective using Sean’s knowledge of chemical engineering. Together, their idea and insights created a wound care product that evolved into HoneyCure. As they started contract manufacturing their product, Sean’s education in process engineering, chemical engineering, and bio-processes translated well from knowledge to skills.
HoneyCure and EnBiologics have been in business for more than five years, but it has not been easy. Early on, Sean and Ramy struggled with having no jobs or resources outside of the entrepreneurial community. With the help of their first advisor, Francis Glorie, Sean and Ramy started their business and made many connections within the community. They had to deal with growing pains, such as outgrowing their output capacities and small office space. With their second advisor, Jeff Ponders II, the business accelerated and grew in the untapped market space.
Sean likes to meet every challenge by looking for a way to overcome it. He says, “there always seems to be a big challenge on the horizon, but I think that we’ve managed to get through them all positively and on a better note than we started them off on. Without these challenges, we wouldn’t have to adapt the business or ourselves in ways that have enabled us to be a better community partner.”
When not working at EnBiologics, Sean works full-time as a research assistant for sleep studies with the Wayne State University School of Medicine. What started as recruiting participants, data collection, and analysis evolved to a bigger role. Sean now supports the coordinating sleep studies, leads most of the analysis, helps the principal investigators with submitting new grants, and more. This work made him want to further his education, so he is currently taking classes for a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA).
Outside of work, Sean enjoys practicing martial arts. He trains in the Minnesota Kali Group (MKG) method. The MKG method is a Jeet Kune Do school of training that is heavily influenced by Kali, a Filipino Martial Art. Sean trains under Kurt Cornwell here in Detroit, who trained under several notable martial artists. This year, Sean started training to become an instructor of MKG. Sean also loves to spend time with his Calico cat, Cara, whom he adopted during the pandemic since he had been working at home more often. She is very active and friendly, keeping him very busy at home! Balancing goals and responsibilities in life can be difficult, but he believes that the challenges he has faced have made him the person that he is today.