About Lea Jaunakais
Meet Lea Jaunakais: from Tega Cay, South Carolina, she is a business owner, biologist, and third-generation environmental analyzer who is passionate about the work she does personally and professionally to drive conservation.
Lea has worked alongside her father for more than 30 years at the business he founded in 1989: Industrial Test Systems (ITS). She has worked her way up within the company to her current role as President and Owner.
Within her career with ITS, Lea Jaunakais began as a Production Supervisor with the company, scheduling production as well as managing personnel, training, and employees and providing senior technical expertise for on-site troubleshooting and critical problems within the project. After earning her Bachelor’s Degree in Biology, Lea moved into a role as a Research & Development Scientist. In this role, she oversaw chemical formulations, strip and instrument development, and manufacturing alongside designing, planning, constructing, and evaluating pilot operations tests and diagnostics. She even worked to reformulate products to help improve not only the performance but, in many cases, the sustainability of these products. In her current role as President and Owner of the company, she has a laundry list of achievements under her belt. Lea has invented and developed more than 14 chemistries to detect ions in water for materials like Heavy Metals, Copper, Ozone, Iron, Silver, Mercury, Arsenic, and more. She was also granted a Patent for the invention of a portable field kit to detect inorganic arsenic in water, soil, and urine. Her expertise has even been quoted in industry publications.
Across her career, Lea Jaunakais has established herself as an experienced professional skilled in areas including research and development, quality control and assurance, sales and marketing, plant management, operations and production, and manufacturing, among other areas. She has developed a comprehensive knowledge of the business’s operations as well as extensive sales experience in the markets in which the business operates.
Equally as important to Lea Jaunakais as her career is her personal love for the world and a focus on its preservation. A passionate conservationist, Lea loves animals and spending time in nature — whether it’s adventuring on a nature hike, kayaking, horseback riding, mountain biking, or white water rafting, Lea soaks up every moment she can spend outdoors. As much as she has always enjoyed taking these trips solo, there’s nothing she loves more than the opportunity to bring her son along on adventures with her now, too. She wants to make sure that he still has the chance to explore the beautiful planet throughout his lifetime as well.
