Welcome to our GBF Ambassadors!
Global Bio Fund is successfully launching its first Ambassador Programme with passionate, gender smart, bio-tech leaders and entrepreneurs. The GBF team had a challenging job of selecting ambassadors from a compelling group of applicants through a competitive process.
The current ambassadors will support the growth of our scouting and marketing activities in Australasia, UK and USA primarily. There is also an opportunity for ambassadors to contribute to the investment pipeline and learn new skills through the 12 month programme.
We are delighted to introduce our 2021–22 GBF Ambassadors below:
Laura Brightman is the CEO of Co-Lab, a biotechnology incubator and services company:
“I love solving early-stage company teething problems and realised that this is what I want to focus on. The work that GBF has been doing is vital for the biology/technology space to progress and I am excited to be a part of that. I’m very concerned with women in science and entrepreneurship who have experienced difficulties such as feeling imposter syndrome and hope I will learn more ways to develop skills in myself and others to overcome these issues”
Tasmin Bateman, Investment Manager at New Zealand Trade and Enterprise:
“GBF combines two of my passions — supporting female founders, and facilitating visibility of New Zealand’s excellent bio industries. As an investment manager, I have seen first hand the challenges encountered by female entrepreneurs when raising capital, and unfortunately this is borne out in the figures. New Zealand excels when it comes to innovation and scientific discoveries but is relatively untapped as a source of deal flow.”
Idin Jafari, works in Commercial Strategy at Kaia Health:
“I strongly believe in GBF’s vision of inclusion, innovation, and sustainability in healthcare. In my current role, I have seen that digital health enables these values by focusing on accessibility and empowering patients to find solutions for conditions that have traditionally been difficult to treat, such as mental health or chronic pain.”
Surya Narayanan, Analytical Associate at Unchained Labs
“Prior to Unchained Labs, I participated in a start-up competition organized by the Centre for Advanced Innovation. I won the competition ( listed as top 15 teams of the 115 teams that participated) and collaborated with Columbia University and NIH. While my start-up idea had great potential, I was limited by funding resources, and a solid team to help me accelerate it. I look forward to being a part of GBF to better understand how teams are identified and resourced while helping them with earlier stages of development.”
Dil Khosa, Founder of Athena X
“I am the founder of the Athena X Project, which aims to build & coordinate authentic, safe and inclusive startup communities such as the Women Tech Founders NZ group. I am very aligned with the purposeful vision of GBF, as well as its progressive leader & founder Ipshita. GBF will be a great network & space for me to learn from and also contribute to, with my generalist skill set across biotech to startup community building.”
Amber Kaplan, Chief Scientific Officer at Karma Biotechnologies
“The Global Bio Fund’s focus on female founded & led companies in the bio space is a dream come true for me. My involvement with the WXR Fund has really helped me understand several examples of how female founders are traversing a difficult landscape (beyond my own). To learn about/help female founders in my area of “practice” is something I’ve wanted to do for a while.”
Natascha Glanzer-Fuerst, Co-founder of Abundance Gate
“I co-founded a company called Abundance Gate addressing crucial gaps in the European innovation ecosystem by aligning facility services, academics, experts, corporations and investors to realize biotech startups’ highest potential in tackling some of the world’s most challenging problems. I am extremely passionate about innovation, women in STEM & inclusion in general and protecting mother earth and this is what has empowered me to become an ambassador for GBF.”
We are very excited to be working with these dynamic emerging leaders in bio venture building.
