John Mendlein, J.D., Ph.D.

Executive Chairman

John Mendlein serves as Executive Chairman of Sail, and has been an executive partner at Flagship Pioneering since February 2019. A longtime member of Flagship’s broader ecosystem of companies, John is an experienced biotech leader and has served in numerous executive and board roles. At Flagship, John contributes to Flagship’s strategic and operational objectives, including the origination of new Flagship Labs companies and growth companies. He also serves on the boards of Flagship’s companies and works with portfolio company CEOs and their teams to achieve the best attainable value for each organization.

Throughout his multi-decade career in biotech, John has helped start and lead numerous innovative life sciences companies with product platforms. Prior to joining Flagship, John served as president of corporate and product strategy at Moderna Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MRNA), a Flagship Pioneering company. John was also a member of Moderna’s board of directors from 2012-2018.

He has also held leadership roles at multiple additional biotech platform enterprises. John was chief knowledge officer and general counsel at Aurora Biosciences (acquired by Vertex Pharmaceuticals) where he also served as a board member; CEO of Adnexus Therapeutics, a Flagship company (acquired by BMS); and executive chairman and CEO of Affinium Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Debiopharm Group).

John is co-author or co-inventor of over 210 publications and published patents. He has served on the boards of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), as well as Flagship’s companies: Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA), Axcella Therapeutics and Editas Medicine (NASDAQ: EDIT). John currently serves on the boards of Flagship companies Omega Therapeutics (OMEGA), Empress, and Profound, and is Executive Chairman of Sail Biomedicines and Versalius.

John holds a Ph.D. in physiology and biophysics from the University of California, Los Angeles, a J.D. from the University of California, San Francisco, and a B.S. in biology from the University of Miami.

Ewen Cameron, Ph.D.

Head of Platform

Ewen Cameron is Head of Platform at Sail and an Operating Partner at Flagship Pioneering, where he has served to conceive, originate and build platform companies. At Sail, he has responsibility for the continued advancement of the company’s targeted nanoparticle and Endless RNA™ (eRNA™) platforms. Prior to joining Sail, Ewen was co-founder and Head of Platform at Repertoire Immune Medicines and was on the founding team of Alltrna. He served as co-founder and President of multiple stealth companies, developing platform technologies now integrated into Ampersand Biomedicines and Metaphore Biotechnologies.

Ewen received his Ph.D. in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from Harvard University and his undergraduate degree from Yale University. He further trained as a research fellow at MIT and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, focusing on synthetic biology. Ewen’s work has resulted in multiple patents and publications, including articles in Nature Biotechnology, Nature Chemical Biology, Cell, Molecular Cell, and Science Translational Medicine.

Amy Espeseth

Head of Pharmacology and Vaccines

Amy Espeseth is the Head of Pharmacology and Vaccines at Sail, with oversight of all in vivo and in vitro testing activities and assay development across Sail.  She also leads all research applying Sail’s platform to the development of novel vaccines.

Prior to Sail, Amy spent over 20 years at Merck, starting as a postdoctoral scientist in the Department of Antiviral Research, and serving in positions of increasing responsibility in multiple scientific disciplines including HIV antivirals, Alzheimer’s disease, RNA therapeutics, and Vaccines. Most recently, she served as Executive Director of Infectious Disease and Vaccines, a role she held for six years. In this position, she led discovery research on prevention and treatment of disease caused by respiratory and herpes viruses.

Amy received a PhD in microbiology and immunology from Duke University and completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Virginia. Additionally, she conducted post-doctoral research at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

Vincent Hennemand, M.B.A., M.Sc.

Chief Product & Operations Officer

Vincent Hennemand is the Chief Product & Operations Officer at Sail and an Operating Partner at Flagship Pioneering.  At Sail, he has oversight of all product research and development activities.  Prior to joining Flagship, Vincent was Chief Executive Officer of Covant Therapeutics, an innovative covalent drug discovery company.  He was previously Chief Operating Officer for Intergalactic Therapeutics, where he oversaw all business and science operations for the company. Vincent also previously worked as Senior Vice President and Head of Strategy, Corporate and Business Development as well as Head of the Immuno-Inflammation Unit at Akili Interactive.  Prior to Akili, Vincent worked as Vice President of Strategy, Corporate, and Business Development across a portfolio companies at PureTech Health (the founding institution of Akili), where he also contributed to the company creation group supporting the seed stage of several PureTech portfolio companies, including Vedanta Bio and Sonde Health. Vincent spent a decade in pharma at Sanofi Genzyme, during which he had the opportunity to hold several positions in R&D, General Management, Manufacturing, and Corporate Venture (SGBV), where he was responsible for developing and managing new investment opportunities including Myokardia, Voyager Therapeutics, WarpDrive Bio and Portal Instruments.

Vincent holds an MSc in Engineering from Ecole Nationale Superieure Arts et Metiers in France, an MSc in Bioengineering from Georgia Tech, and an MBA from MIT, where he received a Martin Trust Center Fellowship.

Rafal Kowalczyk, M.B.A.

Head of Finance

Rafal Kowalczyk is the Head of Finance and Treasurer for Sail, bringing over 18 years of financial leadership experience across public and private biotech startups and global pharmaceutical organizations.  

At Sail, Rafal leads Financial Planning & Analysis, Accounting, and Financial Operations, playing a critical role in shaping the company’s financial strategy and long-term growth. He also oversees Facilities and R&D Lab Operations, ensuring operational excellence across the organization. A collaborative and strategic leader, Rafal is known for building high-performing teams and guiding cross-functional initiatives that drive both financial discipline and innovation.Rafal previously served as Head of Finance at Senda Biosciences. Prior to joining Senda, he held senior financial roles at Passage Bio, Spark Therapeutics (acquired by Roche), as well as AstraZeneca. Before his career in industry, Rafal led Finance roles at United Technologies and multiple subsidiaries (now Raytheon Technologies). 

Rafal holds an M.B.A. in Finance & Entrepreneurialism from Northeastern University and a B.S. in Finance from Quinnipiac University.

Michael Mingueneau, Ph.D.

Head of Immunology

Michael Mingueneau is the Head of Immunology at Sail, where his responsibilities have included establishing a comprehensive understanding of the immunological properties of SAIL’s eRNA platform while building out the company’s immunology unit and pipeline. As part of SAIL’s vision to fully unlock the potential of programmable RNA medicines as a therapeutic modality, the immunology group at SAIL headed by Michael is aiming at transforming the care of patients with immunological diseases by leveraging SAIL’s innovative RNA and delivery technology platforms. Michael is an immunologist and drug discovery leader experienced in the fields of peripheral autoimmunity, neuroinflammation and immuno-oncology.

Michael joined Sail from Biogen, where he held positions of increasing responsibility in the Immunology, Multiple Sclerosis, and Neuroimmunology departments over a period of ten years. At Biogen, as the Head of Immunology and Neuroimmunology unit, he led advancement of several antibody and small molecule programs from early discovery to R2D transition/Ph.1, including BIIB091 BTK inhibitor currently in phase 2 trial in Multiple Sclerosis patients. In this role, Michael’s unit also supported late-stage MS and immunology assets and in-line products. Before Biogen, Michael completed his postdoctoral training in the laboratories of Drs. C. Benoist and D. Mathis (Harvard Medical School, Boston, US) following a Ph.D. in Immunology with Drs. B. and M. Malissen (CIML & Aix-Marseille University, France). Michael’s work has resulted in publications in Nature Immunology, Immunity, Science, Blood, Journal of Exp Medicine, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, among others.

Rajesh Ramaswamy, Ph.D.

SVP, Head of Artificial Intelligence Strategy

Rajesh Ramaswamy is Head of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategy at Sail, where he leads the vision, design, and deployment of Sail’s AI system for teaching machines to generate medicines with unprecedented performance. His work advances a simple idea with profound impact: transform drug creation from a process of chance into a reproducible engineering discipline so that outcomes become predictable and patients receive therapies faster. Rajesh helped launch Sail Biomedicines in October 2023 as the principal architect of its AI nucleus, developed during two years of stealth within a Flagship Pioneering AI venture.

Previously, Rajesh founded and built the Data Driven Innovation office at EMD Serono, the North American entity of Merck KGaA. He established enterprise data science capabilities and applied cutting-edge machine learning across the business to solve strategic challenges. The team’s work powered transformational commercial product launches in Neurology, Immunology, and Oncology by turning marketing and sales into machine-learning guided disciplines that significantly increased the likelihood of desired outcomes.

Before his move into healthcare and life sciences, Rajesh worked in quantitative finance and academia. As a Quantitative Researcher at a global proprietary trading firm, he engineered machine learning systems to profitably traded U.S. and European index and equity options. As an Alexander von Humboldt research fellow at the Max Planck Institutes for the Physics of Complex Systems and Cell Biology & Genetics, he led the development of computer simulations of active living matter to uncover mechanisms that guide embryogenesis.

Rajesh holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from ETH Zürich, Switzerland.

Nick Srikanth, M.B.A.

Head of Strategy & Business Operations

Nick is Head of Strategy and Business Operations at Sail, where he is responsible for corporate and portfolio strategy, communications and investor relations, program management, human resources and the legal function.

Prior to joining Sail, Nick was at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), where he advised Biopharma clients on a range of strategic issues (focusing in particular on long term strategy, launch planning, and lifecycle management). He has also worked at Novartis and GSK in a variety of commercial and strategic roles across the vaccines and consumer healthcare businesses. His roles included: leading the long-term strategy and lifecycle management planning for Shingrix (GSK’s blockbuster shingles vaccine); running the TUMS business in the US (the #1 product in the antacid category); and serving as Chief of Staff to the CEO of GSK Consumer Healthcare. Nick began his career as an investment banking analyst with Deutsche Bank.

Nick holds an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and a BS in Economics and Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences from Northwestern University.

Mark Umbarger, Ph.D.

Head of Artificial Intelligence & Digital Sciences

Mark Umbarger is Head of Artificial Intelligence & Digital Sciences at Sail, where he has oversight for all data science, data systems and engineering, and information technology activities, as well as for the application of Sail’s AI platform to novel medicine design.

Mark has over 17 years of experience building and translating enabling computational and molecular technologies in the life sciences.  Mark previously served as Head of Discovery at Senda Biosciences, and prior to Senda, Mark served as the Vice President of Research and Development at Good Start Genetics, a genetic information company that was acquired by Invitae. At Good Start Genetics Mark built the company’s genetic testing platform from the ground up, leading to the successful testing of over 200k patients in the reproductive health space.

Mark completed his PhD in Genetics in the laboratory of George Church at Harvard Medical School, where he helped build one of the first forms of next generation DNA sequencing and applied this technology to develop new insights into the three-dimensional structure of entire microbial genomes. Mark is the author of 20 patents and patent applications and has published in premier journals such as Molecular Cell and Genetics in Medicine.

Marc Wolfgang, M.S.

SVP, Head of Technical Development & Operations

Marc Wolfgang serves as SVP, Head of Technical Development & Operations for Sail. He is a senior executive with more than 25 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry and deep expertise across manufacturing, process and analytical development, QA/QC, regulatory affairs, and program/​portfolio management. He joined Senda in 2023 as SVP, Chemistry, Manufacturing and Controls from BioNTech U.S., where he served as Vice President, U.S. Manufacturing, with responsibility for the manufacturing and supply chain of U.S.-based cell and gene therapy products (CAR T and modified T Cell products) including outsourcing and internal manufacture. He had previously served as Vice President, Technical Operations for Neon Therapeutics, with responsibility for the manufacturing, supply operations and quality control of personalized peptide vaccine and oncology T-Cell products, prior to Neon’s acquisition by BioNTech.

Before Neon, Mr. Wolfgang served in a series of increasingly senior leadership positions at companies that include Cerulean Pharma (where he was responsible for CMC strategy and operations for two nano-pharmaceutical platforms in the oncology space), Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, and Biogen, as well as serving as chairman (2016) and as a board member (2011–2016) of the Nanomedicines Alliance, a Washington D.C. cooperative advocating for the development and commercialization of nanomedicine therapies. He holds an M.S. in Chemistry from Montclair State University and a B.S. in Biology from Pennsylvania State University.

John Mendlein, J.D., Ph.D.

Executive Chairman

John Mendlein serves as Executive Chairman of Sail, and has been an executive partner at Flagship Pioneering since February 2019. A longtime member of Flagship’s broader ecosystem of companies, John is an experienced biotech leader and has served in numerous executive and board roles. At Flagship, John contributes to Flagship’s strategic and operational objectives, including the origination of new Flagship Labs companies and growth companies. He also serves on the boards of Flagship’s companies and works with portfolio company CEOs and their teams to achieve the best attainable value for each organization.

Throughout his multi-decade career in biotech, John has helped start and lead numerous innovative life sciences companies with product platforms. Prior to joining Flagship, John served as president of corporate and product strategy at Moderna Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MRNA), a Flagship Pioneering company. John was also a member of Moderna’s board of directors from 2012-2018.

He has also held leadership roles at multiple additional biotech platform enterprises. John was chief knowledge officer and general counsel at Aurora Biosciences (acquired by Vertex Pharmaceuticals) where he also served as a board member; CEO of Adnexus Therapeutics, a Flagship company (acquired by BMS); and executive chairman and CEO of Affinium Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Debiopharm Group).

John is co-author or co-inventor of over 210 publications and published patents. He has served on the boards of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), as well as Flagship’s companies: Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA), Axcella Therapeutics and Editas Medicine (NASDAQ: EDIT). John currently serves on the boards of Flagship companies Omega Therapeutics (OMEGA), Empress, and Profound, and is Executive Chairman of Sail Biomedicines and Versalius.

John holds a Ph.D. in physiology and biophysics from the University of California, Los Angeles, a J.D. from the University of California, San Francisco, and a B.S. in biology from the University of Miami.

Stephen Berenson

Board Member

Stephen Berenson is Managing Partner Emeritus at Flagship Pioneering and a member of the company’s Resource Allocation Committee. Stephen is also chairman of the boards of Flagship-founded companies, Cellarity  and  Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB), and is on the board of directors at Sail Biomedicines and Inari.

Stephen joined Flagship in June of 2017 after a 33-year career as an investment banker at J.P. Morgan. During that time, he worked across all major geographies, product areas and industry groups, and helped build the bank’s M&A, equities and technology investment banking businesses. He was co-founder of J.P Morgan’s Global Strategic Advisory Council and co-founder of the firm’s Board Initiative. During Stephen’s leadership of the Board Initiative, more than 1,000 independent directors of public companies attended at least one of J.P. Morgan’s board events to discuss, debate and share best practices on the key issues they faced in the fulfillment of their duties.

Stephen previously built and ran Flagship’s Capital Formation and Business Development teams, and he served on the boards of directors of Flagship-founded companies, including  Moderna, where he helped guide the company’s growth from pre-IPO through the COVID-19 pandemic and into the post-pandemic period, CiBO Technologies, and Repertoire Immune Medicines.

Stephen graduated from MIT in 1982 with an S.B. in mathematics. He is a member of the Visiting Committee for MIT’s Department of Mathematics. He previously served on the board of trustees of Jacob’s Pillow and the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center.

Pablo Cagnoni, M.D.

Board Member

Pablo J. Cagnoni, M.D., is President and Head of Research & Development at Incyte where he oversees Incyte’s research and development efforts across its portfolio of programs in Oncology, Hematology and Inflammation and Autoimmunity, including Dermatology.

Prior to Incyte, Dr. Cagnoni served as the Chief Executive Officer of Laronde, a company dedicated to the development of a new type of translatable ribonucleic acid (RNA) called endless RNA (eRNA), and held leadership roles at Rubius Therapeutics, Tizona Therapeutics, Onyx Pharmaceuticals and Novartis Oncology. Throughout his career as a pharmaceutical executive and oncologist, Dr. Cagnoni has advanced the development of breakthrough treatments, playing a key role in the development, approval and commercialization of more than 20 life-changing medicines.

Dr. Cagnoni earned his medical degree from the University of Buenos Aires School of Medicine. He completed his fellowship in Hematology and Oncology at the Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York, and a fellowship in Stem Cell Transplantation at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.

As well as serving on the Board of Sail, Pablo is a member of the Board of Directors for Fusion Pharmaceuticals and Synthekine. He also serves on the Board of Trustees for the Bay Area Discovery Museum and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He previously served as a board member for CRISPR Therapeutics, Harpoon Therapeutics, Tizona Therapeutics and Tango Therapeutics.

Ron Cami, J.D.

Board Member

Ron Cami is an Executive Partner at Flagship Holdings.  Prior to this role, Ron was a Partner of the U.S. healthcare asset management platform of the B-FLEXION group (f/k/a Waypoint Group). Ron was a member of the board of directors of the B-FLEXION group, and member of its executive committee. He also oversaw the B-FLEXION group’s investment partnerships and direct holdings in the United States. Ron acted as the Group’s global general counsel and was responsible for legal, tax, compliance, and governance functions, as well as all transaction activity across the wider group.

Prior to joining B-FLEXION, Ron was a Partner and General Counsel of TPG Global in San Francisco, where he was a member of the Investment Review Committee. Ron has also served as a Partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore and a Partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell. During his career, he has accrued deep experience in all aspects of investing and operational activities of private fund businesses and large family offices.

Ron received a B.A. at Harvard College in 1989 and J.D. from Rutgers University School of Law in 1993. Ron also clerked for Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy in U.S. District Court in New York City, while Judge Duffy presided over the first World Trade Center bombing case.

Wendy Chung, M.D., Ph.D.

Board Member

Wendy Chung, M.D., Ph.D., is Chief of the Department of Pediatrics of Boston Children’s Hospital, on the faculty at Harvard Medical School, and President of the Children’s Hospital Pediatric Associates. She is the PI of GUARDIAN (Genomic Uniform-screening Against Rare Diseases in All Newborns), a study that explores the utility of whole-genome sequencing for screening newborns for rare and treatable genetic conditions. She leads two large autism and neurodevelopmental disorder cohorts, SPARK and Simons Searchlight.

Dr. Chung joined Boston Children’s from Columbia University Irving Medical Center/NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, where she served as Chief of the Division of Clinical Genetics within the Department of Pediatrics, the Associate Director for Education at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Medical Director for the Columbia Genetic Counseling Graduate Program, and the Precision Medicine Resource Leader at the Irving Institute. Dr. Chung was also the Kennedy Family Professor of Pediatrics in Medicine.

With more than 20 years of experience as a clinical and molecular geneticist, Dr. Chung has directed many National Institutes of Health-funded research programs. She was the tenured Kennedy Family Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine and was the Director of Clinical Research at the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI). She was also the Director of the Pediatric Neuromuscular Network Molecular Core and the New York Obesity Center Molecular Genetics Core.

Dr. Chung received her BA in biochemistry and economics from Cornell University, her MD from Cornell University Medical College, and her PhD in genetics from Rockefeller University.

Frank D’Amelio, M.B.A.

Board Member

Frank D’Amelio is a senior executive with over 20 years of experience as a public company CFO. In addition to his CFO experience, Frank has also been a CAO & COO.

Frank is the former Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer at Pfizer, Inc, responsible for all corporate finance functions including audit, treasury, tax, investor relations, insurance, operations planning and analysis, corporate controllership, and business finance and analytics. From 2019 through 2021, Frank was the Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President, Global Supply responsible for Pfizer’s worldwide global supply chain. This included the manufacture, storage and distribution of the COVID vaccine. More than 3B doses of the COVID vaccine were made in the first year of production. During his time at Pfizer, Frank was also responsible for business operations which included IT, procurement, real estate and business development.

At Pfizer, Frank led the acquisition and integration of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, King Pharmaceuticals, Hospira Inc., Anacor Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Medivation, Inc., and Array, as well as the spin-off of Pfizer’s animal health business, Zoetis, the sale of its nutrition business to Nestle and its Capsugel business to KKR, the formation of the Consumer JV Haleon with GSK and the formation of Viatris with Mylan.

During Frank’s tenure as the Pfizer CFO, Pfizer’s market cap increased by $165B. Including the Zoetis spin-off, market cap increased by approximately $250B. Further, Frank has completed business development transactions totaling approximately $200B.

Before joining Pfizer as CFO in September 2007, Frank was Senior Executive Vice President of Integration and Chief Administrative Officer of Alcatel-Lucent, responsible for the integration of the Alcatel-Lucent merger as well as procurement, real estate, IT and supply chain.

Prior to the merger of Alcatel and Lucent Technologies in 2006, Frank was the Chief Operating Officer of Lucent Technologies. In 2001, he was appointed Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Lucent, where he helped lead the company through one of the most challenging periods in the telecom industry’s history and returned the company to profitability.

When Lucent was spun off from AT&T in 1996, Frank helped create the new company financially as the CFO of Lucent’s Network Systems Business and was a critical member of the team that met with investors around the world during Lucent’s initial public offering. In 1999, he was appointed the Group President of Lucent’s Switching Solutions Business Unit, where he led Lucent’s multibillion-dollar, global Switching, Access and Application Software business.

Born and raised in New Jersey, Frank earned his MBA in Finance from St. John’s University and his bachelor’s degree in Accounting from St. Peter’s University. He started his career in 1979 at Bell Labs, holding a variety of financial, accounting and general management positions, and moved within AT&T, holding a series of positions with increasing responsibility.

In 2005, 2006, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 Frank was ranked among America’s top CFOs by Institutional Investor magazine.

He currently serves on the Boards of Directors of Humana, Inc., and is chair of the Audit Committee; Zoetis, Inc.; Hewlett Packard Enterprises; Catalent, Inc., and is the CFO-in-Residence, Independent Advisor, Deloitte LLP.

Paula Hammond, Ph.D.

Board Member

Professor Paula T. Hammond is Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. She became Vice Provost for Faculty at MIT in January 2024.  She previously was the Head of the Chemical Engineering Department at MIT from 2015 to 2023.

Her research in nanomedicine encompasses the development of new biomaterials to enable drug delivery from surfaces with spatio-temporal control. She investigates novel responsive polymer architectures for targeted nanoparticle drug and gene delivery, and is known for her work on nanoparticles to target cancer as well as thin film coatings to release factors that regenerate bone and assist in wound healing. More recently, she has worked on nanomaterials systems to treat osteoarthritis and staged-release for the delivery of vaccines.

Professor Paula Hammond was elected into the National Academy of Science in 2019, the National Academy of Engineering in 2017, the National Academy of Medicine in 2016, and the 2013 Class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is also a member of the National Academy of Inventors,  and has received the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Margaret H. Rousseau Pioneer Award for Lifetime Achievement by a Woman Chemical Engineer, the Othmer Gold Medal and the Benjamin Franklin Medal of Chemistry.

Professor Hammond has published more than 330 papers and more than 20 patent applications. She is a co-founder of LayerBio, Inc., a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Moderna Therapeutics, Inc., a member of the Board of Alector and of Sail Biosciences. In 2021, Professor Hammond was selected to become a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

Prof. Hammond is from Detroit, Michigan and received her S.B. in Chemical Engineering from MIT, then worked for two years in industry, moved to Atlanta to get an M.S. in Chemical Engineering at Georgia Tech, before returning to MIT for her Ph.D. She held the Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship and, upon completing her Ph.D., was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard University Chemistry Department before returning to MIT as a faculty member.

Sheri McCoy, M.S., M.B.A.

Board Member

Sheri McCoy had a 30-year distinguished career with Johnson & Johnson where she ultimately served as Vice Chairman of the Executive Committee and member of the Office of the Chairman.  Sheri’s extensive global experience in healthcare includes roles of increasing responsibility within the pharmaceuticals, medical device, and consumer groups at Johnson & Johnson. Following her tenure at  Johnson & Johnson, Sheri served as chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors for Avon Products Inc., a global leader in personal care.

Ms. McCoy currently serves as a director on the boards of several industry-leading healthcare companies, including AstraZeneca plc, Stryker, and Kimberly-Clark. Sheri is an industrial advisor to EQT Partners, and in that capacity, she is board Chair of Parexel, a member of Galderma’s board, and previously served as Board Chair of Certara and Aldevron.

Sheri holds a bachelor’s of science degree in Textile Chemistry from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, a master’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University, and an MBA from Rutgers University.

Laura Sepp-Lorenzino, Ph.D.

Board Member

Laura Sepp-Lorenzino, Ph.D. is Scientific Advisor, Executive Vice President and former Chief Scientific Officer at Intellia Therapeutics, a leading clinical-stage genome editing company developing novel, potentially curative medicines leveraging CRISPR-based technologies. Before joining Intellia, Laura was VP, Head of Nucleic Acid Therapies and member of the External Innovation team at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, with previous positions as VP and entrepreneur-in-residence at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Executive Director RNA Therapeutics at Merck & Co., Inc. In addition to her extensive experience in nucleic acid therapies, Laura has expertise in oncology drug discovery and development acquired earlier in her career by leading the Cancer Research Department at Merck West Point and working as an assistant attending molecular biologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. She received her professional degree in Biochemistry from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina and both her M.S. and Ph.D. in Biochemistry from New York University. Laura is a member of the board of directors of Sail Biomedicines, Taysha Gene Therapies, the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM), and The American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT), and sits on the scientific advisory boards of Thermo Fisher Scientific, the U.K. Nucleic Acid Therapy Accelerator, and Arsenal Capital Partners. Laura is a member of the Editorial Board of Nucleic Acid Therapeutics and Molecular Therapy Nucleic Acids.