Biotech CEO Sisterhood: Biotech company chair, director, and former CEO Paula Soteropoulos discusses learnings from her career and announces a new book she and her daughter wrote about women's health
Interviewed by Sisterhood Editorial Board Member Erika Smith, Paula Soteropoulos describes her experiences working for companies across a variety of modalities. Plus, she highlights the new women's health book she and her daughter co-authored: Restoring Balance.
Biographies
Ms. Soteropoulos has more than 35 years of biopharma industry experience in strategic and operational leadership areas including drug development, global commercialization, manufacturing, new company formation and company building. In addition to a strong focus on rare disease, her career spans a broad range of therapeutic areas including cardiovascular and metabolism, neurology, infectious disease, renal, and transplant and oncology. She currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Ensoma, where she played an instrumental role in launching the company from its venture seed stage. Ms. Soteropoulos also serves on the Board of Directors for Dianthus Therapeutics, Rallybio, Kyowa Kirin North America and Metri Bio, and is an advisor to Chiesi Rare Disease. Previously, she served as founding CEO and member of the Board of Directors at Akcea Therapeutics, where she led the company through its IPO and commercial launch of two rare disease medicines and also served as a board member of uniQure for 11 years. Prior to Akcea, she was Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cardiometabolic and Rare Disease Businesses and Strategic Alliances at Moderna, Inc. Before Moderna, Ms. Soteropoulos spent more than 20 years at Genzyme Corporation where she held positions of increasing responsibility including Vice President and General Manager, Cardiovascular, Rare Diseases. Ms. Soteropoulos earned an executive management certificate from the University of Virginia – Darden Graduate School of Business Administration and both Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Chemical and Biochemical Engineering from Tufts University.
Erika Smith is life sciences entrepreneur who has combined technical and business expertise with 30-years of industry experience building, investing in, and successfully exiting life-science and technology companies
Previously, she led EpiTET Therapeutics, developing novel oral therapeutics that selectively eliminates pathogenic macrophages, and ReNetX Bio, a venture funded neuro-science company
As an investor, she served as the inaugural director of the $65M Blavatnik Fund at Yale, launched the Johnson & Johnson investment fund in partnership with the Center for Innovative Technology and was a Venture Advisor to Epidarex Ventures, a transatlantic life-science venture firm. These early-stage investments enabled successful exits including medSage (acq: Philips Healthcare), Isoplexis (NASDAQ: ISO), and Biorez ($250M Acq NYSE: CNMD).
She is the Board Chair (ECS) and on the Executive Committee Board of Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) and a recognized thought leader holding numerous awards including: “Industry Superstar”, “Entrepreneur of the Year,” and co-author of playbook “Empowering Women Entrepreneurs” sponsored by JPMorgan Chase; and TEDx speaker. Erika received a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical and Electrical Engineering and a Master of Business Administration (MBA).
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