Ashley Dombkowski, PhD 
Managing Director, Bay City Capital

Ashley Dombkowski, Ph.D. is a Managing Director with Bay City Capital, a $1.6B venture capital firm focused on life sciences. She has more than 15 years of experience as an investor, operating executive, and entrepreneur in the healthcare field. Prior to joining Bay City, she served as Chief Business Officer and Vice President of Operations for 23andMe, where she had oversaw the company’s finance and operations activities and had responsibility for the company’s long term business strategy focused on database growth plans, R&D productivity, and profitability.

Prior to joining 23andMe, she was a Managing Director with venture capital firm MPM Capital where she also served as a member of the firm’s Investment Committee. During her years at MPM she focused on developing innovative biotechnology, medical device, and healthcare IT companies, including companies such as 23andMe, Adolor, Alnara, BioVitrum, Epizyme, iPierian, Neosil, Nevro, Rigel, and Tercica. Prior to this, she was a Healthcare Equity Analyst for hedge fund Tiger Management L.L.C. and for institutional asset management firm Dresdner RCM Global Investors. Dr. Dombkowski holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Rice University and received her B.A. in Mathematics from Wellesley College. She has been widely quoted in publications ranging from Nature to The Wall Street Journal and she has appeared in media outlets ranging from CNBC to TedMed. She was recognized as one of the 100 Most Influential Women in Business by the San Jose/Silicon Valley Business Journal in 2010.

Mark Charest
Vice President, New Leaf Venture Partners

Mark Charest, Vice President, joined New Leaf Venture Partners in 2012. Previously, Mark was an Associate and Kauffman Fellow at Panorama Capital where he served on the board of Itero Biopharmaceuticals and was a board observer at Presidio Pharmaceuticals and PowerVision.

Mark joined Panorama from ZS Associates, where he led consulting engagements for a variety of global pharmaceutical companies focused on commercial strategy and optimization. Mark gained early healthcare investing experience as an Associate at Great Point Partners where he sourced and managed capital allocations in public and private healthcare companies. Prior to Great Point, Mark played a leadership role in several drug discovery programs in the oncology area as a medicinal chemistry lab manager at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research.

Mark received his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry and Chemical Biology from Harvard University as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and his B.A. in Chemistry with the highest honors from Rutgers University. During his graduate studies, Dr. Charest completed the chemical synthesis of tetracycline and made key contributions to intellectual property out-licensed to found Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals.

Evan McCulloch, CFA
Portfolio Manager, Franklin Templeton Investments

Evan McCulloch is a vice president, portfolio manager and analyst for Franklin Equity Group. Mr. McCulloch is the lead portfolio manager of Franklin Biotechnology Discovery Fund. He is also the health care sector team leader. Mr. McCulloch specialises in research analysis of biotechnology and emerging pharmaceutical companies, with a therapeutic focus on infectious diseases, ophthalmology, pulmonology, cardiovascular disease, gastroenterology and the central nervous system. Prior research coverage includes the pharmaceutical, medical technology and healthcare service sectors. Mr. McCulloch joined Franklin Templeton Investments in 1992. He earned his B.A. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Charterholder, and a member of the CFA Institute and the Security Analysts of San Francisco (SASF)..

Before Constellation, Dr. Goldsmith held other senior executive positions in the biotechnology industry and academia. Prior to his appointment at Constellation in 2009, he was senior executive-in-residence at Prospect Venture Partners, a leading life science investment firm based on the west coast, after serving as chairman and CEO of Cogentus Pharmaceuticals. Previously he was senior vice president, responsible for the health care division of Genencor International, an independent and publically listed company prior to its acquisition by Danisco. Before entering the private sector, Dr. Goldsmith led a productive biomedical research laboratory at the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology, and he has co-authored 85 peer-reviewed scientific publications and is co-inventor on multiple patents. He practiced medicine on the faculty of the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine and at San Francisco General Hospital, and served as a consultant to and collaborator of leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

Dr. Goldsmith received his BA degree from Princeton University, earned his MD and PhD in microbiology and immunology from UCSF, and conducted postgraduate medical training at Harvard Medical School and UCSF.

Eugene Rozelman
Managing Director, Biopharma Investment Banking, Canaccord Genuity

Eugene Rozelman is a Managing Director and senior member of Canaccord Genuity’s Global Life Sciences Investment Banking team. He is responsible for transaction origination and execution in the Emerging Therapeutics space. Eugene joined Canaccord Genuity from HSBC where he was a member of the Global Healthcare Investment Banking group. He has over 13 years of investment banking experience advising biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. Prior to joining HSBC, Eugene was with Wells Fargo Securities where he focused on Life Sciences sector coverage. He began his career in Life Sciences investment banking at Robertson Stephens. Eugene received a M.B.A. from the NYU Stern School of Business and holds a B.A. in Biology from New York University.

David Thomas, CFA
Director, Industry Research & Analysis, BIO

David is currently Director of Industry Research and Analysis at BIO in Washington, DC. In this role, he is responsible for financial statistics and analysis of the biotechnology sector and contributes to BIO’s policy activities as well as programming for BIO’s investor conferences. Prior to joining BIO, he was a research scientist at the J. Craig Venter Institute working on the “synthetic cell” team led by Nobel Laureate Hamilton Smith. Before his role in synthetic biology, David worked as a protein scientist in early drug discovery at Amgen, Millennium, and Novartis. David has completed all three levels of the chartered financial analyst (CFA) program and holds a master’s degree in biochemistry from Washington State University.

Effie Toshav
Partner, Fenwick & West LLP

Ms. Toshav’s national practice focuses on providing counsel to life sciences clients where she serves as a strategic advisor on a wide range of business and legal issues. Her experience covers the full spectrum of issues and transactions facing such companies, including the negotiation and structuring of complex technology transactions, complex strategic partnering transactions, intellectual property counseling, R&D commercialization collaborations and university licensing. She also represents both companies and investors on corporate matters, including formation issues, public offerings, spin outs, corporate financings and mergers and acquisitions transactions.

Ms. Toshav is known for partnering with her clients as an integral member of the management team to collaborate on setting strategic direction as well as structuring and negotiating complex legal and corporate transactions. Her extensive operational in-house experience and deep understanding of the issues facing emerging and public life science companies allows her to provide clients with highly practical and relevant advice.

Prior to joining Fenwick & West, Ms. Toshav served as Senior Vice President and General Counsel with AVI BioPharma, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVII), a developer of RNA-based therapeutics, and prior to that, a partner in the life sciences practice at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. From June 2004 to June 2006, she was general counsel of GlycoFi, a venture-backed, private biotechnology company, and played a significant role in the sale of the company to Merck for $400 Million. Prior to GlycoFi, Ms. Toshav was senior corporate counsel at Protein Design Labs, predecessor of Facet Biotech.