Corporate Advisory Board
Edwina Wright, Ph.D.
Intellectual Property
Edwina Wright is an independent consultant providing management services and advice to clients including early-stage companies, universities and academic institutes, funding bodies and investors in the biotechnology arena.
Services provided include business planning, IP strategy and patent portfolio management, partner identification and negotiation of licence and collaboration terms, assessment of in-licensing opportunities, competitor monitoring, relationship management (university/spinout, or with collaborators) and interim management. Previously, Edwina was Director of Intellectual Property Development at MRC Technology, the technology transfer company of the UK Medical Research Council.
At
MRCT, Edwina’s team was responsible for assessment, protection and
management of intellectual property, across the field of biomedical
science, arising in MRC’s research Institutes and Units, throughout
the UK.
The team was also active in commercial exploitation, including
facilitating collaboration with industry, marketing and licensing of
technologies and formation of new companies.
Prior to embarking on her career in technology transfer, Edwina was employed as a research scientist in the biotechnology industry, at Celltech Group plc. She has a PhD in molecular genetics from the University of Leicester and held successive post-doctoral positions at St George’s Hospital Medical School, London and at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.
Laura Barker Morse
Corporate Organization & Growth
Ms. Morse is Managing Director of Entrepreneurship Ventures,
a consulting firm serving early stage technology companies.
From 1999
until 2008 she was Human Capital Partner for Atlas Venture, a transatlantic
early stage venture capital firm with offices in Boston, London, Paris
and Munich.
For more than a decade she worked closely with the Atlas
Venture portfolio companies including Phase Forward, Alnylam, Archemix,
Helicos and Ivrea working on strategic team building issues including
recruitment, management development, compensation and total reward
systems and strategic human resource planning. Prior to joining Atlas
Venture, Ms. Morse worked in Brussels for SWIFT, the global financial
telecommunications consortium, where she reported to the CEO during
a strategic reorganization and led worldwide recruiting and expatriate
services.
Beginning her career with Booz, Allen & Hamilton, she
spent twenty years as a partner in technology executive search with
Russell Reynolds and Heidrick & Struggles.
She is a frequent speaker on team building at MIT, Boston University and Harvard University and she has been appointed Visiting Lecturer at MIT/Sloan University.
Martin Varsavsky
Corporate Strategy
Martin Varsavsky is an Argentine/Spanish entrepreneur, founder of seven companies in the past 20 years. Martin Varsavsky's best-known ventures were founded during the last decade. In 1998 Martin Varsavsky started Jazztel Telecomunicaciones (Jazztel), Spain's second largest publicly traded telecom operator.
In 1999 he founded Ya.com,
Spain's third largest internet web site/DSL provider that includes
the second largest Spanish language web agency www.viajar.com. Martin's
current venture is FON, founded in November in 2005, a community-empowered
company dedicated to building the world's largest global WiFi network
bottom up, spreading the power of WiFi around the world, with one million
hot spots by 2010. Among others, Fon attracted Skype, eBay, BT and
Google as partners and quickly became the largest WiFi community in
the world.
Martin Varsavsky also engages in not for profit activities
and he is an active blogger (www.martinvarsavsky.net) and frequent
speaker at conferences around the world.
Martin received his BA from New York University, and holds an MA in International Affairs and an MA in Business Administration from Columbia University.
Richard P. Kivel
Technology and Entrepreneurship
Mr. Kivel is a serial entrepreneur and seasoned life science & technology executive with a proven record of building successful companies, world-class teams and securing profitable exits for investors. Since April 2006 he has served as CEO of TheraGenetics, Ltd, a UK-based genetic diagnostics company. In January 2009, TheraGenetics was acquired by UK based Avacta Group plc. LSE: (AVCT). Mr. Kivel has remained as CEO and continues to lead the growth of TheraGenetics under the new ownership.
Prior to this, Mr. Kivel has worked with and built multiple startups. From 2001-2004, he served as CEO of MolecularWare, Inc., a MIT spin-out and leader in genomic and proteomic microarray technologies. In June, 2003, the company was acquired by a California based company, CalbaTech, Inc.
Mr. Kivel serves as Chairman of the Global Board of Directors of the MIT Enterprise Forum and a member of the MIT Alumni Association Board. A frequent guest lecturer at the Institute, he also serves as a judge for the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. He has been selected by Mass High Tech for the “All Star” award for leadership in Biotechnology as well as named by the Boston Business Journal as one of its “40-under-40”.
Zeid Barakat
Corporate Advisor, Market Research
Zeid Barakat received his MBA and Entrepreneurship and Innovation Certification from the MIT Sloan School of Management, an MA in Biotechnology from Harvard, and a BA in Biochemistry from Bowdoin College. Zeid has worked as a Scientist/ Head of Analytical Development at Altus Pharmaceuticals, where he coordinated contract studies, alliances, and let a successful $50M financing round prior to public launch. Zeid has also worked in Portfolio Management at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, and provides consulting services for multiple biotech, pharma, vaccine, and private equity firms in Healthcare at PRTM.