R&D Leadership, Mentorship and Navigating Challenges in Biotech and Pharma

Laurie Halloran founded Halloran Consulting Group in 1998, originally operating out of an unfinished bathroom. Her time as a pediatric ICU nurse had inspired her to start a company that helps move new therapies through FDA processes to get them into the hands of patients desperately in need. By providing a strategic development team, innovative start-up companies could have access to world-class expertise at a fraction of the cost. Since its humble beginnings, Halloran has grown into a successful consultancy of like-minded experts who are dedicated to improving human health by making life science companies better at what they do.Ms Halloran has been named 2018 Women’s Business Enterprise Star by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) and has won a 2017 Enterprising Women of the Year Award from Enterprising Women Magazine. Halloran Consulting Group was also named an Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Company for the past three years in a row. In 2015, Ms Halloran was honored by the Boston Business Journal as a Woman of Influence, in 2010 was selected as one of the 100 Most Inspiring People in Life Science by PharmaVoice, and in 2009, she was awarded Clinical Researcher of the Year by the New England Chapter of the Associate of Clinical Research Professionals.

Dr Pearl Huang joined Cygnal Therapeutics in January 2019 as President and CEO. She is also a venture partner at Flagship Pioneering and a member of the board of Cygnal Therapeutics.Prior to Cygnal, Pearl served as Senior Vice President and Global Head of Therapeutic Modalities at Roche where she oversaw the discovery of biologic, small molecule, and nucleic acid-based therapies. She previously held several other senior roles within the pharmaceutical industry, including Vice President and Global Head of Discovery Academic Partnerships at GSK. In 2010, she founded BeiGene and served as Chief Scientific Officer until 2012, developing the company’s initial drug discovery pipeline and moving the company’s first programs into the clinic. From 2006 to 2010, Pearl was Vice President, Oncology Integrator of Discovery and Early development at Merck, leading 14 early development teams and conducting seven first-in-human trials in one year. Before joining Merck, Pearl lead oncology discovery at GSK where she helped initiate programs that delivered tramentinib and dabrafenib to patients.Pearl received her undergraduate degree in life sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a PhD in molecular biology from Princeton University.

Alise Reicin, MD, is a 20+ year R&D veteran of the pharmaceutical industry and served most recently as President of Global Clinical Development at Celgene. In her distinguished career at Merck, EMD Serono and Celgene, Dr Reicin led teams and functions that enabled the approval of >15 novel drugs and indications that now account for over $20B in global sales across a variety of disease areas including autoimmune (Zeposia®, Arcoxia®, Mavenclad®, Simponi®) and oncology (Keytruda®, Inrebic®, Reblozyl®, Bavencio®, Breyanzi®). She joined Tectonic in 2020 as President and CEO and holds an MD with honors from Harvard Medical School where she was part of the Health Science and Technology program (HST). Dr Reici served as a faculty member at Columbia University’s Medical School for a decade, where she did research and specialized in the treatment of infectious diseases.