Experienced business executive with a successful track record of commercializing innovations, launching new products to market, and building new businesses in the pharma, biotech, and consumer sectors. Founder and CEO of DERMALA, a consumer dermatology startup that leverages scientific understanding of the human microbiome and data analytics to develop and launch novel, patented, science-backed, and clinically validated topical treatments and supplements for acne, eczema, and skin health & longevity to market. Before founding DERMALA, I spent more than 15 years in the biotech and pharma industry. I started my career as a Scientist and Group Leader at Mycogen, a biotechnology startup in San Diego that the Dow Chemical Company acquired for $1.2B. I then held various leadership positions at the Dowpharma division of the Dow Chemical Company, including as the R&D Leader of Vaccines and immunotherapies, Director of New Business Development, and other leadership positions responsible for early innovation and partnering. The Dowpharma San Diego was spun out into a venture-funded Pfenex Inc. that went public via an IPO. I then joined the University of California San Diego to build world-class entrepreneurship capabilities at the newly founded business school, the Rady School of Management. At Rady. I founded and was the Managing Director of the Rady Venture Fund (8 investments, 3 exits) and developed an entrepreneurship and venture capital-oriented MBA curriculum. I co-founded and built the California Institute for Innovation and Development/Sulivan Center for Entrepreneurship, StartR accelerator, the incubation program for commercialization of early-stage innovations, and worked with more than 200 technology-driven startups founded by UCSD students and alumni. As a result of my work, the Rady School ranked #4 among the U.S. business schools in entrepreneurship, #1 among the University of California, and #2 in California (after Stanford). I received several awards for my work, including the Athena Pinnacle Award, the Most Innovative Thinkers Award, and multiple San Diego 500 Influential Business Leaders Awards.