Played pivotal role in formation of company and successful closing of financing rounds, provided key input in planning and executing strategic transactions; built effective and efficient legal and intellectual property team.

First legal team member with accountability for managing all legal and regulatory matters during company’s first two years of operation. Direct outside counsel to deliver highest quality legal advice in specialized areas. Manage one paralegal for in-house day-to-day operations and filings.✔ Led company’s human subjects research compliance efforts, including drafting informed consents proposals and obtaining Institutional Review Board approval.✔ Managed all intellectual property matters, including patent prosecution, freedom to operate analyses, and provided oversight for outside counsel to protect company IP.✔ Negotiated and drafted a broad range of commercial agreements, including research collaborations, licensing, and corporate partnership agreements. Representative agreements included, ✔ Celgene Cellular Therapeutics, licensing and collaboration agreement for PSC-100 placental stem cell commercialization and Genentech whole genome sequencing collaboration agreement.✔ Interfaced with scientific and clinical research teams to provide effective and prompt legal support.✔ Serving as ethics and law compliance officer, established privacy policy and implemented training for employees. Devised legal strategy for formation of clinical medicine business unit.

Provided strategic and tactical oversight to a corporate law and IP group delivering general legal and intellectual property services to a company undergoing rapid growth. Hired, developed and led a talented team of 5-6 attorneys/agents, 3-4 paralegals & contract administrators. Managed external counsel relationships, including compliance with internal guidelines for fee arrangement and billing. Introduced cost control initiatives and managed an annual budget of over $6M for all legal and IP operations.✔ Built and directed the entire GNF’s legal and intellectual property group from the ground up to support rapid company growth from 200 to 600 employees.✔ Defined and drove implementation of strategy, vision, and best practices; implemented policies, procedures, and established support infrastructure for daily operations.✔ Changed staffing model from hiring external legal counsel to recruiting internal personnel to complete all drafting and prosecution work in-house, realizing savings of $1M in annual vendor fees; improved team productivity, handling more patent cases per attorney/agent than counterparts at similar companies.✔ Instrumental in leading team towards growing GNF’s patent portfolio from about 5 cases to 300+ patent families, some of them filed in 100+ countries around the world. Negotiated various types of agreements including licenses, collaborations, laboratory services and consulting; completed 300+ agreements annually.✔ Played a pivotal role in moving GNF’s first drug from the bench to the clinic by devising the strategy to favorably resolve a third-party patent issue that prevented a significant royalty burden for Novartis.✔ Trusted advisor to the senior management team on complex IP, legal and business issues. ✔ Conducted freedom to operate analyses and devised design-around strategies; prepared patent invalidity and non-infringement opinions and conducted IP due diligence.

✔ Established GNF's intellectual property strategy, procedures and support infrastructure✔ Hired patent attorneys, agents, and paralegals to build GNF's IP team✔ Advise company management on intellectual property matters

Developed and prosecuted patent applications relating to life sciences, including biotherapeutics, vaccines, and novel applications of the company’s “gene shuffling” technology. ✔ Devised novel strategy for claiming “shuffled” genes. Conducted freedom to operate analyses.

Conducted patent application drafting, due diligence, and prosecution on biotherapeutics, pharmaceuticals & vaccines. Performed freedom to operate analyses and devised design-around strategies. Developed patent invalidity and non-infringement opinions and drafted interference motions. Provided support for patent litigation and other intellectual property disputes.

Conducted molecular biology research directed towards bioengineering of protein-linked oligosaccharides.