Please join us for an exciting evening exploring entrepreneurship! Successful business women will share their journeys and the strategies they used to grow their companies, fund raise, and turn their ideas into reality.

Agenda:
5:30pm – 6:00pm Light refreshments & networking
6:00pm – 8:00pm Seminar
8:00pm – 8:30pm Networking

Moderator (Bios Below):

• Joanne Kamens: Executive Director, Addgene

Panelists (Bios Below):

• Teresa Nelson: Principal of The Impact Seat and Professor, Simmons College
• Ailis Tweed-Kent: CEO, Cocoon Biotech Inc.
• Patrice Milos: Co-Founder/President and CEO, Medley Genomics
• Laura Hales, PhD: Founder/President, The Isis (Editing) Group

Registration
MASS AWIS members $8 · Non-members $15

Biographies

Joanne Kamens

Dr. Kamens is the Executive Director of Addgene, a mission driven, nonprofit dedicated to helping scientists around the world share useful research reagents and data. Addgene was a Boston Globe #1 Top Place to Work in 2016. Dr. Kamens received her PhD in Genetics from Harvard Medical School then spent 15 years as a researcher and manager in Pharma at BASF/Abbott. In 2007 she joined RXi Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Kamens has been raising awareness of women scientists since 1998 upon realizing that an entire week had gone by at work and not one other woman had been at any meeting she attended. She founded the current Boston chapter of the Association for Women in Science. In 2010, Dr. Kamens received the Catalyst Award from the Science Club for Girls for longstanding dedication to empowering women in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics and in 2013, she was named one of PharmaVoice’s 100 Most Inspiring Commanders & Chiefs.

Teresa Nelson

Teresa Nelson is a Founding Principal of The Impact Seat, a knowledge bank and consulting service working for inclusive innovation. With business partner, Barbara Clarke, and a modular team of experts, the company uses its network to take the ideas of diversity to a richer level by applying the best research and practice available in business and academia. The Impact Seat creates pathways for people and ideas to change the business models of science, capital markets, government and corporations so that talent and resources have reach beyond conventional ground. As an academic and Professor of strategic management at Simmons College, Nelson’s teaching and research focus on innovation and access to social and financial capital. She has a long-standing engagement with international business issues, including especially China and the European Union. She is recognized for her work on inclusive teams, with a focus on diversity of perspective and demographics; commercialization of science and its impact on our technology future; and gender and its applications in business. Her engagement extends to training — creativity, the pitch, diversity and inclusion — which she shares with individuals, teams and organizations. Nelson is a versatile public speaker able to design and deliver small group training sessions, keynotes and conference moderation. She is also active on the policy front as an advisor and government appointee. Teresa’s passion is to work with students and practitioners who want to have an impact in their domains.

Ailis Tweed-Kent

Dr. Ailis Tweed-Kent is an up-and-coming entrepreneur and leader in the development of innovative medical technologies. With her education in medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and residency in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Ailis has first hand knowledge of the burden of disease. In 2013, Ailis was inspired by her patients to found Cocoon to develop innovative silk therapeutics for osteoarthritis. Prior to Cocoon, she worked on the design, development, and delivery of diagnostic technologies for global health collaborating with organizations such as PEPFAR/Office of U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and the Global Health Delivery Project. She brings a multidisciplinary approach with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame. In February of 2017, Ailis was named by the Boston Business Journal as one of the “2017 Women to Watch in Science and Technology”.

Patrice Milos

Dr. Milos, a pioneer at the interface of genomics and healthcare, currently serves as President/CEO of Medley Genomics focused on describing genomic heterogeneity in complex human disease. Immediately prior Patrice held the position of President/CEO at Claritas Genomics, a pediatric molecular diagnostic company spun out of Boston Children’s Hospital. Patrice also served as the Boston Site Head for Pfizer’s Center for Therapeutic Innovation and Precision Medicine Lead as well as Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer for Helicos BioSciences. Patrice also had a great tenure as Executive Director for Pfizer Global Research and Development leading a precision medicine portfolio of genomic sciences and technologies applied across the pipeline. Dr. Milos serves on the European Commission funded ULTRAPLACAD External Advisory Board, advises Baby’s First Test on innovative genomic technologies applicable to Newborn Screening and is Senior Advisor to SeqLL. Patrice also serves on Boston Children’s Hospital Technology Advisory Board, is an active NIH SBIR Chair for grant reviews and has served on the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research.

Laura Hales, PhD

Laura M. Hales is a cofounder and Chief Business Officer of Extend Biosciences Inc., an emerging biotechnology company that is developing a novel drug delivery platform technology that improves the pharmacokinetic properties of peptides and proteins. At Extend Biosciences, Dr. Hales manages all of the outsourcing, operational and business development activities for the company. She has also been instrumental in obtaining the $4M+ in non-dilutive funding the company received from multiple state and federal agencies. Prior to founding Extend Biosciences, Dr. Hales was one of the first five employees at Purdue Pharma’s research facility in Princeton, NJ, where she led multiple project teams developing antibody-based therapies for cancer. Following that, she was the second employee at the venture-backed startup company Neotropix, Inc. where she was part of a 6-person team that brought an oncolytic virus into the clinic in just 13 months. During this part of her career, she built and managed multidisciplinary preclinical research teams, managed external collaborations, conducted due diligence activities, co-authored a successful IND application, and gained in-depth knowledge of the technological and developmental aspects of biologics drug discovery. Dr. Hales is also the Founder and Principal at The Isis Group, a scientific communications and consulting company where her primary focus is to assist life science entrepreneurs in new business formation and non-dilutive funding efforts, with a particular focus on obtaining SBIR funding. Dr. Hales received her PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University.

Thanks to our sponsor for hosting this event!