Konrad Powell-Jones | Director, Business Development

In his role as Director of Business Development, Konrad applies his extensive pharma and tech transfer experience in leading the SickKids IP&C business development team. With over 25 years of combined experience as a Biotechnology Commercialization Manager for institutions such as the University of Toronto, The Canadian Arthritis Network, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and Sinai Health System, and over 15 years as a Contracts Specialist for CAMH and other hospitals affiliated with the University of Toronto, he brings a broad spectrum of knowledge to commercializing early-stage discoveries out of our institution.

Mounia Azzi, PhD | VP, Program Development & Partnerships

As Vice President, Program Development and Partnerships, Dr. Azzi is leading adMare’s project identification and scientific and commercial evaluation process, ensuring a robust and strategically diverse pipeline for the organization.

With deep experience in corporate and business development, Dr. Azzi is working closely with adMare’s Venture Partners to build their portfolios through new program creation, asset identification and investment area development. In doing so, she is playing a key role in advancing adMare’s Mission to source therapeutically and commercially promising research from leading academic and biotech partners from across Canada to create and grow companies of scale.

Dr. Azzi holds a PhD in Neuroscience from Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) in Paris.

Amie Phinney, PhD, MBA | Sr. Director, Program Development & Partnerships

As the Sr. Director for the Program Development and Partnership team at adMare BioInnovations, Amie Phinney uses her biomedical research and business background to create and guide scientific collaborations.

Most recently, Amie was at Northwestern University in Chicago, where she led an academic-VC partnership aimed at translating academic discoveries into novel therapeutics. Prior to Northwestern University, she gained extensive experience managing academic-pharma collaborations and biotech-pharma alliances at Abbott and AbbVie Labs in Chicago.

Amie received her BSc at University of Guelph, her PhD in Biomedical Research at the University of Basel in Switzerland, and her MBA at Lake Forest Graduate School of Management in Chicago.

Konrad Powell-Jones | Director of Business Development – IP&C, The Hospital for Sick Children

In his role as Director of Business Development, Konrad applies his extensive pharma and tech transfer experience in leading the SickKids IP&C business development team.

With over 27 years of combined experience as a Biotechnology Commercialization Manager for institutions such as the University of Toronto, The Canadian Arthritis Network, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and Sinai Health System, and over 15 years as a Contracts Specialist for CAMH and other hospitals affiliated with the University of Toronto, he brings a broad spectrum of knowledge to commercializing early-stage discoveries out of our institution.

Danielle D’Annunzio | Business Supervisor – GADA, The Hospital for Sick Children

Danielle has 12 years of experience working at The Hospital for Sick Children in a variety of roles, with 7+ years specifically supporting researchers and the operations portfolios of the organization.

Danielle leverages her experience working with researchers on their projects, contracts, and applications submissions to provide a full spectrum perspective from identifying funding opportunities to project and grants management.

Beatriz Chavez | Sr. Contracts Specialist – GMO, The Hospital for Sick Children

Beatriz brings 8 years of experience in the healthcare sector specializing in Funding Management, budgeting, and project management.

Her previous work experience was with the Ministry of Health, where she facilitated funding to all 193 healthcare providers in the Toronto area before moving into her SickKids role. She is extremely well versed in developing complex budgets and mitigating financial risk.

Professor Molly Shoichet is a University Professor, a distinction held by less than 2% of the faculty, at the University of Toronto.  She served as Ontario’s first Chief Scientist in 2018 where she worked to enhance the culture of science.

Dr. Shoichet has published over 650 papers, patents and abstracts and has given over 420 lectures worldwide. She currently leads a laboratory of 30 and has graduated 220 researchers. Her research is focused on drug and cell delivery strategies in the central nervous system (brain, spinal cord, retina) and 3D hydrogel culture systems to model cancer.

Dr. Shoichet co-founded four spin-off companies, is actively engaged in translational research and science outreach, and she is the recipient of over 50 prestigious distinctions. Dr. Shoichet received her SB from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1987) and her PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in Polymer Science and Engineering (1992).

As a scientist by training and entrepreneur by practice, Michael is passionate about building biotech companies that transform human health and planetary sustainability. At Flagship Pioneering, Michael works as part of a venture creation team to ideate, launch, scale, and operate new biotech startups from the ground-up. Prior to Flagship, he was the founder and CEO of ARCHITECHealth, a life sciences consultancy, where his team advised and supported a range of clients from startups to hospitals/healthcare systems. He was also the founder of Industry Link, an organization connecting academic talent with the life sciences industry to help train future generations of entrepreneurial scientists.

Michael completed his PhD in placental biology at McMaster University, and his MSc in Physiology and Pharmacology at Western University. Michael was a Vanier Scholar, where he nationally ranked as one of the top four doctoral scientists by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Chris is a partner in Blakes’ Toronto office who specializes in finance, acquisition and reorganization transactions as well as governance matters. He advises clients ranging from large, multinational corporations, research institutions and venture and private equity investors to very early-stage start-up companies. Chris is also a founder of Nitro, Blakes program for providing legal services and support to promising early-stage companies.

Chris spent a number of years practicing law in Boston. Currently, Chris serves on the board of directors and governance and finance committees of several not-for-profit entities, including one of Canada’s Networks of Centres of Excellence and regularly speaks on a variety of matters relating it innovation and the development of successful ventures.

John has a unique career mix of science, alliance management, and business development that has delivered drugs for clinical development, managed international R&D alliances, transacted major licensing and partnership deals, and launched a handful of startups. He is currently the Executive Vice President of Business Development at Nanology Labs, an IND-stage spinout from the University of Toronto and UHN, which is developing a breakthrough therapy to treat solid tumor cancers resistant to radiotherapy.

In 2020 he started Taking Terms, a service to help build biotech ventures coming out of the Ontario research ecosystem. Previously, he served as the Director of Technology Development and Commercialization at UHN from 2014-2020. Prior to that, he has served in several executive leadership roles at organizations such as the South Korean government, and AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals.

John received his PhD in Microbiology & Immunology from the University of California at Berkeley, and his MBA from the Le Bow College of Business at Drexel University.