Yasmeen has offered real estate, economic development, and strategic advisory services to the Tri-State area innovation community for the past 20 years. With her relationship building and project management experience, Yasmeen works with growing biotech startups to find, lease, and furnish new office and lab spaces, and to access public funding and incentives to support that growth. She also advises larger organizations on building and planning initiatives in tech and life sciences, often as a life sciences “lens” for groups entering the market: evaluating sites, developing strategy, and strengthening networks. Yasmeen received her degrees from Amherst College and the University of California at Berkeley, and lives with her family on Long Island. 

Lorraine has three decades of experience in new product development, innovation commercialization and digital transformation.  She has held leadership positions at IBM, Bristol Myers Squibb, LabCorp, Cognizant, and IQVIA, and has cofounded four companies.  Marchand is an advisor to Fortune 500 companies including Hewlett Packard, Johnson & Johnson, and Jabil.  She is a member of the Board of Directors of SeromYx Systems and on the advisory boards of Ocean Genomics and Praava Health.  An adjunct professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at Yeshiva University’s Katz School of Science and Health, Marchand also serves as Practitioner in Residence at the Katz School.  She is a Lecturer at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.  She serves on the Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Management Program Advisory Board at Columbia Business School and is a mentor to the START Program at Princeton University and the New York University Endless Frontier Labs. 

Her new book, THE INNOVATION MINDSET: Eight Essential Steps to Transform Any Industry, is published by Columbia Business School Publishing.  Marchand has recently given talks on innovation at Yeshiva/Cornell, Women in Bio-NY Metro Chapter, Columbia Business School, the Museum of Science, Boston, Ernst & Young, PTC Therapeutics, Inc., the Union League-Philadelphia, the Association of Corporate Counselors and Novartis.  She has been featured in Inc.com, Investor’s Business Daily, CIO Magazine and in the MIT Sloan Management Review.

Mark Adams is a venture partner at Two Bear Capital, where he focuses on life sciences, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity companies. Mark was most recently COO and CTO at Adaptive Biotechnologies, a public biotechnology company in Seattle, WA.  He has previously had C-Suite roles in several biotechnology companies, as well as leading a consulting practice at Booz Allen Hamilton.  He has also led artificial intelligence and data science teams in finance at Bridgewater Associates and Leerink Partners. Mark holds a PhD in molecular biology and undergraduate studies in computer science.

Mikko is a Senior Project Manager of the Life Sciences and Healthcare Initiatives portfolio at the New York Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC). In this role, Mikko has managed NYCEDC’s digital health portfolio, developed the Life Sciences Internship Program, coordinated interdisciplinary projects such as the Pandemic Response Institute and the SPARC Kips Bay campus, and sourced PPE during New York City’s COVID-19 response. Prior to his role in NYCEDC, Mikko supported the business and product development for a biotech startup. He has conducted research in City College’s Musculoskeletal Biomechanics lab and published on the topic of osteoporosis. He has also engaged in community work to encourage neighborhood populations to engage in the participatory budget process. Mikko holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Biomedical Engineering from the City College of New York.

Dr. Natasha Shtraizent, PhD, graduated from Tel Aviv University and completed her postdoctoral studies in New York, first at City University of New York, and then at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She founded Grit Bio, Inc., a start-up company formed in 2017 to advance development of novel cancer therapeutics, working in collaboration with an academic group at Icahn’s School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. After Grit Bio, Natasha helped founded FREZENT Biological Solutions, which was founded to address the unmet need for novel effective therapies for advanced stage cancer patients. Their focus is on patients with rare types of head and neck cancer, with a 5-year survival rate less than 50%. She has also co-founded other Biotech companies like Nest Catalyst and Aveta life. In addition to entrepreneurship, Dr. Shtraizent has managed funding programs focused on the development of novel interventions for inflammatory bowel diseases at Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation, and has spent time as a scientist at Bristol-Myers Squibb.