Running the Room Where Genetic Medicine Gets Made
In September 2024, a child with cystic fibrosis became the first patient dosed in ReCode Therapeutics' Phase 1b clinical trial of RCT2100 - an inhaled mRNA therapy designed to function where every existing treatment has its limits. Behind that milestone: years of molecular biology, clinical logistics, regulatory filings, and a small, fast-moving team of 61 people operating with the urgency that rare disease demands. Somewhere in that machinery, keeping the CEO on time and the SVP of Corporate Communications on message, is Jessica Kelly.
Her title - Senior Management Associate, Supporting the CEO - is the kind of role that sounds modest until you realize what it actually requires. At a 61-person clinical-stage biotech with $345 million in capital and two drugs in active trials, the person in this seat isn't just managing calendars. She is the operational ballast for an executive who is simultaneously managing board relationships, investor communications, regulatory milestones, and a scientific team working at the frontier of nonviral lipid nanoparticle delivery. Kelly carries that weight every day, from her home base in Pacifica, California - a coastal city where the Pacific rolls in hard off the breakwater and the fog makes everything feel a little more serious.
"The best executive associates don't just keep pace with leaders - they create the conditions where those leaders can move faster."
On the discipline of high-stakes executive support in biotechA Career Built in Life Sciences' Most Demanding Rooms
Kelly's path to ReCode didn't start with a Silicon Valley pedigree. It started with the kind of ground-level operational work that most people underestimate. At Halozyme Therapeutics, she built her reputation not through visibility but through execution - event planning, executive administration, and the unglamorous work of coordinating across leadership structures in ways that actually held. Colleagues noted her leadership instincts even in support roles: someone who saw the whole board rather than just the piece she was playing.
From Halozyme, she moved to Alector - the San Francisco-based clinical-stage biotech focused on neurodegeneration - where she served as Senior Executive Assistant supporting not one but three C-suite leaders simultaneously: the President/COO, the VP of People, and the VP of Portfolio and Program Management. That's not multitasking. That's operating in a room where three distinct leadership priorities are pulling in different directions at once, and someone has to be the connective tissue that keeps it from fraying.
Halozyme Therapeutics
Built foundational skills in C-suite operations, event planning, and executive administration at a publicly traded biotech.
Alector (2020-2022)
Senior Executive Assistant supporting President/COO, VP of People, and VP of Portfolio & Program Management - three leaders, one role.
ReCode Therapeutics
Senior Management Associate supporting CEO Shehnaaz Suliman and SVP of Corporate Communications at a company rewriting genetic medicine delivery.
Following the Mission - From Alector to ReCode
In January 2022, Shehnaaz Suliman - formerly President and COO at Alector - was appointed CEO of ReCode Therapeutics. Suliman is not a conventional biotech CEO: she's a physician (MD from the University of Cape Town), a Rhodes Scholar with an MBA and M.Phil from Oxford, and someone with a track record that spans Gilead Sciences, investment banking at Lehman Brothers, and the front lines of clinical-stage neuroscience. When she moved to ReCode, Kelly made the move with her.
That kind of transition - following a leader from one company to another - says something specific. It means the relationship between executive and associate has cleared a threshold well beyond "she manages my inbox." It means trust built over time, demonstrated judgment in high-pressure situations, and an operating style that actually fits. Kelly didn't apply to a job posting at ReCode. She was part of the leadership infrastructure Suliman brought with her.
ReCode Therapeutics: The Company at the Center
ReCode Therapeutics is a clinical-stage genetic medicines company built around one genuinely novel idea: what if you could deliver mRNA - or gene-correcting tools - to the lungs, without a viral vector? Its SORT (Selective Organ Targeting) lipid nanoparticle platform uses a biochemically distinct fifth lipid to redirect delivery away from the liver and toward targeted organs and tissues. The technology appeared in Nature as one of the "Seven Technologies to Watch in 2022." That's not a press release - that's peer-reviewed editorial judgment.
The company has two active clinical programs targeting diseases where current treatments leave patients behind: RCT2100 for cystic fibrosis patients with mutations that don't respond to approved modulators, and RCT1100 for primary ciliary dyskinesia caused by DNAI1 mutations. Both are inhaled therapies. Both represent firsts.
The Clinical Pipeline - What Kelly's Work Enables
| Program | Target Disease | Mechanism | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| RCT2100 | Cystic Fibrosis | Inhaled CFTR mRNA | Phase 2 |
| RCT1100 | Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia | Inhaled DNAI1 mRNA | Phase 1 |
In November 2025, ReCode initiated enrollment of a Phase 2 clinical trial of RCT2100 in combination with ivacaftor for cystic fibrosis. In March 2025, the FDA granted RCT2100 Orphan Drug Designation. In September 2025, the company announced over $29 million in additional financing. The pace is relentless. The regulatory, communications, and operational overhead that accompanies each of these milestones flows through the CEO's office. And through Kelly's hands.
What Operational Excellence Looks Like at Scale
There is a category of professional that biotech couldn't function without but rarely features in its press releases: the executive associate who actually understands the science, the regulatory environment, the board dynamics, and the investor relations calendar well enough to anticipate rather than just react. Kelly's profile in life sciences - across Halozyme, Alector, and now ReCode - describes exactly that profile.
Her skills are listed with characteristic precision: C-suite operations, board logistics, cross-functional executive support, event planning at the organizational level, liaison work between executive leadership teams across office locations. At 500+ LinkedIn connections, she's been building her professional network in life sciences for years - the kind of network that gets quietly relied on when a conference falls apart or a key stakeholder meeting needs a venue, fast.
"Behind every great biotech CEO is someone keeping the machine running."
On the unsung operational infrastructure of clinical-stage biotechsPacifica to the Pacific Northwest of Biotech
Kelly lives in Pacifica, California - not San Francisco, not Menlo Park, not the tech corridor. Pacifica is where the coast gets real: surf breaks, fog, and a commuter identity that sits quietly outside the venture-capital spotlight. It's a detail that fits someone whose entire professional identity is built around making other people's work possible rather than centering her own.
ReCode Therapeutics is headquartered at Carolina Lane in Atherton - one of the wealthiest zip codes in the country, a town where biotech and venture capital live quietly behind hedgerows. The distance between Pacifica and Atherton is about 30 miles. The professional distance between "executive assistant" and "Senior Management Associate supporting the CEO at a $345M genetic medicines company" is measured in years, judgment calls, and the kind of trust that only gets built by showing up and delivering, consistently.
The Underexplored Infrastructure of Biotech
For every profile of a biotech CEO or chief scientific officer, there are a handful of people who make that leader operationally possible. They book the flights that make investor meetings happen. They build the communication infrastructure that allows a CEO to speak clearly to three audiences simultaneously - scientists, investors, and regulators - without losing the thread of any. They create the space for bold decisions by handling the hundred decisions that shouldn't require a CEO's attention.
Kelly has built a career being exactly that person - first at Halozyme, then at Alector, now at ReCode - each move tracking upward in organizational complexity, scientific ambition, and operational stakes. The fact that she followed Suliman from Alector to ReCode is the clearest signal: when a CEO makes a major career move, they take the infrastructure they trust.
Education and Early Formation
Kelly attended Skyline College in San Bruno, California in the early 1990s - a community college on the San Francisco Peninsula that has sent generations of Bay Area students into the workforce. It's not a detail she would lead with, but it's part of the story. Biotech's operational backbone didn't come from Stanford or Harvard. It came from people who built skills through proximity, observation, and consistent execution in real organizations.
Kelly lives in Pacifica - one of the few genuinely surf-able cities in the Bay Area - while working for a company trying to use nanoparticles to surf mRNA into diseased lung cells.
ReCode's SORT platform uses a fifth lipid to de-target the liver. It was Nature's pick as a technology to watch in 2022. Kelly's employer picked it as a technology to bet a company on.
The CEO Kelly supports - Shehnaaz Suliman - is a Rhodes Scholar, MD, and former investment banker. In operational terms, that means the calendar is complicated.
ReCode's total raise of $345M is distributed across multiple rounds, including $33M from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation alone - among the larger patient-advocacy investments in CF biotech history.