Joanne Smith-Farrell is the President and CEO of Be Biopharma, a Cambridge, Massachusetts company building a new class of medicines from engineered B cells - the body's own protein factories. A physicist by training who moved into drug development, she has spent more than 25 years leading teams tackling cancer and rare diseases, most notably building bluebird bio's 400-person oncology cell therapy business behind the CAR-T therapy Abecma. Since taking the helm at Be Bio in early 2021, she has steered the company through more than $350 million in funding as it works to turn B cells into durable, in vivo sources of therapeutic proteins.
David Steinberg is Chief Business Officer at Formation Bio, an AI-native pharmaceutical company in New York, where he runs in- and out-licensing and pipeline strategy. A serial biotech company builder, he co-founded PureTech Health and served as its Chief Innovation Officer, was a General Partner at Longwood Fund, and founded or led a string of NASDAQ-listed and venture-backed companies including Pyxis Oncology, Vor Biopharma, Vedanta Biosciences and Be Biopharma. He pairs a Cornell biology degree with a University of Chicago Booth MBA and a career that began in R&D and strategy consulting.