Funding Pathways for Innovators

SUMMARY

Panel Discussion:  Funding Pathways for Innovators

Moderated by Joan Koerber-Walker  
Panelists:

Kelly Slone, Vice President, Life Science Policy at the National Venture Capital Association
Kelly Slone serves as Vice President, Life Science Policy at the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA)  NVCA is the national trade association for the venture capital industry; its mission is to foster understanding of the importance of venture capital to the vitality of the U.S. and global economies.Slone is responsible for raising the visibility of NVCA’s life science members to congressional, administrative, and regulatory leaders with regard to the important role venture capital plays in the creation and development of disruptive medical therapies and technologies. She is also the lead lobbyist on public policy issues that affect life science investors and their portfolio companies, including healthcare reform, FDA reform, CMS reimbursement, patent reform, and small-business issues such as those related to SBA’s SBIR grant program. She also partners with other health-related trade associations and patient advocacy groups to coordinate and leverage key policies and messages important to the advancement of U.S. medical innovation.In 2010, Slone directed the launch of NVCA’s Medical Innovation and Competitiveness Coalition (MedIC), a coalition of the top U.S. venture capital firms, their portfolio companies, and entrepreneurs dedicated to developing policies to advance U.S. leadership in medical innovation. She is a member of MedIC’s steering committee, and also represents NVCA as a partner of the Council for American Medical Innovation (CAMI).Prior to joining NVCA, Slone spent 11 years as senior director of legislative and international trade affairs for Baxter Health Corp., a Fortune 50 healthcare company. In this capacity she lobbied, developed, and implemented strategies on a wide range of issues, including FDA reform, the development of FDA user fees, product liability, and various corporate tax issues. She also managed the company’s political action committee. 

MaryAnn Guerra, BioAccel
MaryAnn Guerra is currently Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, and co-founder of BioAccel™. Ms. Guerra is well known for creating novel programs to accelerate the transfer of technology from the lab into useful products and new business opportunities. Ms. Guerra has spent her career operating successful and progressive health, science and technology businesses. She is an expert at business development and strategic planning initiatives that create organizations poised to deliver commercial outcomes. Since the launch of BioAccel in April 2009, 10 companies have been successfully launched with products close to commercial availability. Additional new technologies and companies are under development. Additionally BioAccel partnered with the City of Peoria to create the first medical device accelerator, embedding the BioAccel philanthrocapitalism model into its operations. In May 2013 BioAccel received the City of Peoria’s, City Manager’s Award for Outstanding Partnership in Economic Development. Prior to founding BioAccel, Ms. Guerra served as President of TGen Accelerators, LLC and Chief Operating Officer at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen). While at TGen she facilitated the start-up of 6 companies and was involved in the sale of 3 of those that yielded significant profits for the organization. As TGen’s former COO she grew the organization from $30M to over $60M in less than 3 years. 

Paul Jackson, Worthworm and Integrus Capital
Paul Jackson is an entrepreneur, angel investor, and aerospace engineer. His engineering expertise and entrepreneurial spirit are driving forces behind his founding of Integrus Capital, and co-founding its flagship offerings, Worthworm and D-Strut LLC. After a successful career as a dynamics engineer for Orbital Sciences and a commercial space development consultant in Washington D.C., Mr. Jackson founded Dynamic Labs, a recognized leader in environmental testing dedicated to testing and evaluating products in the early stages of development for commercial and military applications. Dynamic Labs served approximately 80% of the high-tech industry in the American Southwest, including defense primes such as Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon and Honeywell.