How Does a Start-up Embrace Open Innovation with a Large Corporation 
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Panelist Bios

Ena Chan Cratsenburg is the Chief Business Officer at Ginkgo Bioworks where she is responsible for building a scalable business that advances Ginkgo’s mission to make biology easier to engineer. Prior to joining Ginkgo, Ms. Cratsenburg held various executive and senior management positions at Intrexon, Evolva, and Amyris. During her career in the field of synthetic biology, Ms. Cratsenburg led commercialization strategies for these emerging technology companies and established key partnerships with market leaders across various sectors, such as cosmetics, flavors and fragrances, food and beverage, nutritional health markets, and biofuels. Prior her career in synthetic biology, Ms. Cratsenburg held various business development and management roles at Pixar Animation Studios and BP p.l.c.  Ms. Cratsenburg has an M.B.A. from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management of Northwestern University, and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  Ms. Cratsenburg lives in San Francisco Bay Area and is on the Board of the San Francisco Opera Guild since 2008, serving on its Executive Committee and chairing its Endowment Fund from 2011 – 2015, and chairing its Audit Committee since 2016.

Monika Lessl is Head of Corporate Innovation and R&D at Bayer AG promoting Innovation throughout the organization. She is leading strategic approaches to promote Bayer’s Innovation capabilities, foster Open Innovation, strengthen cross-functional R&D capabilities and drive Social Innovation. Prior to this role she was head of Innovation Strategy at Bayer AG where she developed Bayer’s Innovation Agenda. Until 2013 she led the External Innovation Therapeutics function at Bayer HealthCare in Berlin, Germany, where she designed the therapeutic partnering strategies and established a number of novel and innovative partnership models with academia, biotech and Venture Capital as well as open innovation initiatives. Prior to this she was CEO of the Ernst Schering Foundation, where she promoted innovative programs to foster emerging research areas and excellent young scientists. She spent 8 years as a scientist and lab head in the research laboratories of Schering AG performing drug development in the area of Women’s Health Care. She holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin and a Diploma in General Management from Ashridge Business School London. She served as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the British council and is a former fellow of the Robert Bosch Foundation. Full Bio

Dr. Elizabeth O'Day is the CEO and Founder of Olaris Therapeutics, a pharmaceutical company that develops precision medicines for diseases with little to no treatment options and dismal survival rates. Dr. O'Day is also the Founder of Lizzard Fashion, an apparel company that uses fashion to promote science. Partial Lizzard proceeds support cancer research. Additionally, Dr. O'Day founded Proyecto Chispa, a non-profit that recycles electronics and uses the resale of parts to build computer centers in orphanages throughout the world. Through her work at Proyecto Chispa, Dr. O'Day was selected as the Greenovate Champion of the Year by the Mayor of Boston in 2015. Dr. O’Day received her PhD from Harvard University, where she was a National Science Foundation fellow. She was one of eleven America scientists awarded a Winston Churchill fellowship and received a Master’s of Philosophy in Chemistry from the University of Cambridge. She has a Bachelors of Science degree from Boston College in Biochemistry. Dr. O’Day is also a Global Shaper at the World Economic Forum and was an invited speaker as a “new champion to reboot healthcare” at the annual meeting in Davos in 2016. She was also a "nominated change maker" and invited to attend the first ever United State of Women Summit convened by the White House in 2016. Full Bio

Maggie O’Toole is the Vice President of Operations at LabCentral. She provides overall direction and guidance to the operational activities of the company and oversees expansion projects including the Harvard Life Lab, a branch of the Harvard Innovation Labs operated by LabCentral as well as MIT's The Engine. Maggie has more than 20 years of experience in business start-ups working with the founders to establish a company’s infrastructure and ultimately is responsible for business management and daily operations. Prior to LabCentral, she served as director of operations for Pervasis Therapeutics, an early-stage biotech acquired by Shire. Previously, she has held management positions with Reputation Technologies; acquired by Security Source, Inc., Synetics, Inc.; acquired by ACS, and Elephant Engineering; acquired by Syntronics, LLC. Maggie earned her bachelor’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University.

Steven Robinette is a principal at Atlas Venture and focuses on the formation and operations of companies translating emerging biology into novel therapeutics.  Steven was a member of the founding teams of Kymera Therapeutics and Disarm Therapeutics, and has served as a board observer for a number of portfolio companies including Lysosomal Therapeutics, Cadent Therapeutics, and Spero Therapeutics. Prior to joining Atlas Venture in 2015, Steven was an engagement manager at McKinsey & Company, serving pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients on R&D topics including investment strategy, asset diligence, and pipeline prioritization. Steven received his Ph.D. from Imperial College London, where he studied the biochemical genetics of rare disease in the laboratory of Jeremy Nicholson, and through a graduate partnership program with the laboratory of William Gahl at the National Human Genome Research Institute.  Steven’s graduate work was sponsored by the British Marshall Scholarship, the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program, and the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program.  Steven received his B.S. in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Florida.  

Jon Giebel is the Program Lead for Bayer’s LifeHub Boston. In his role, Jon is responsible for leading a cross divisional open innovation space with a goal of leveraging the strong innovation ecosystem in Cambridge and Boston. The LifeHub Boston strives to convene diverse communities and creative thought leaders to explore solutions to complex challenges in the fields of health and nutrition. Before joining the LifeHub Boston team, Jon worked in Bayer’s CropScience business, leading a team of scientists focused on isolating and culturing environmental microbes for insecticidal toxin discovery. In addition to his scientific and business responsibilities, Jon works with passionate volunteers in community outreach activities that advance Bayer’s core mission statement, Science for a Better Life. Jon earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Michigan. His academic studies focused on the mechanisms of Bacillus anthracis spore germination, sexual differentiation pathways in the parasitic wasp Nasonia sp., and the post-mating effects of accessory gland proteins in female Drosophila melanogaster.