Veronica Gambillara Fonck and the art of starting again

The sale was followed by a start. In February 2015, GSK took full ownership of GlycoVaxyn, the Swiss company where Veronica Gambillara Fonck had worked since 2009. By that summer, a new business called LimmaTech Biologics was beginning operations in Schlieren, near Zurich. Its research operation came from GlycoVaxyn. Gambillara Fonck became a co-founder and CEO. The transaction had changed the company’s ownership; the people still had work to do.

That sequence makes a useful entrance to her career. Follow the names on the office door and you encounter GlycoVaxyn, LimmaTech, GlycoEra and, eventually, Pureos Bioventures. Follow her responsibilities and you find regulatory affairs, business development, company formation, fundraising and investing. The names change more quickly than the underlying business of getting an organisation ready for its next job.

There is a temptation to stop a founder’s story at the financing announcement or the acquisition price. Both make convenient punctuation. Gambillara Fonck’s working life keeps going through the full stops. The next company, the next executive and the next board appointment are where this particular story gets interesting.

The company after the deal

Before the company titles came engineering and a doctorate. Gambillara Fonck earned her PhD in life sciences at EPFL in Lausanne; the university lists her among its former doctoral students for 2005. Her early professional responsibilities included research and international regulatory affairs. When she joined GlycoVaxyn in 2009, her work extended across regulatory and business development roles.

Those responsibilities put different parts of an organisation in the same career. Regulations concern what a company must demonstrate. Business development concerns the relationships and agreements through which it can move forward. In her case, the executive-team role preceded a transaction that brought GlycoVaxyn fully into GSK’s ownership in 2015.

The deal had a history of its own. GSK had begun a scientific collaboration with GlycoVaxyn in 2012 and already owned a minority stake. In February 2015 it paid $190 million in cash for the remaining shares, valuing the whole company at $212 million. Gambillara Fonck was one of the team members involved in building the business ahead of that acquisition.

Then came an unusually consequential piece of organisational housekeeping. GSK commissioned GlycoVaxyn’s management to establish another company. The operational research business was transferred into LimmaTech, founded in May 2015. LimmaTech was independent of GSK ownership, with an agreement lasting at least five years. Partnership and independence occupied the same business plan.

For Gambillara Fonck, the change meant a co-founder’s role and responsibility for running the new company. The interesting detail is the continuity: an existing research operation acquired a new corporate setting. A sale, a transfer and a launch belonged to one connected sequence. The ribbon-cutting, had one been required, would have needed rather careful labelling.

A new name for the next job

GlycoEra eventually emerged from LimmaTech. It existed as a business unit before becoming a separate company, an intermediate stage that makes the later spinout easier to understand. Work already under way was being given a dedicated organisation. Gambillara Fonck became its co-founder and founding CEO.

The distinction between establishing a company and announcing it matters here. GlycoEra dates its inception to 2020. Its public incorporation announcement followed on January 5, 2021. The new company held a worldwide exclusive licence from LimmaTech to the CustomGlycan platform and associated assets. The licence supplied a concrete connection between the two businesses.

Another connection was personal. Amir Faridmoayer joined her as co-founder and chief scientific officer. Ganesh Kaundinya, himself a company founder with executive experience, became an inaugural board member. The new business therefore began with a division of responsibilities: a founding CEO, scientific leadership and an experienced director.

Even in a career measured in company names, these details deserve room. A spinout involves decisions about rights, leadership and the relationship with the parent organisation. GlycoEra’s formation announcement put those pieces on the table. Gambillara Fonck’s next task was to lead the separate business into its first substantial financing chapter.

The CHF 45 million chapter

On November 5, 2021, GlycoEra announced a CHF 45 million Series A, reported at the time as US$49 million. Three firms co-led it: 5AM Ventures, Roche Venture Fund and Sofinnova Partners. LimmaTech also invested. The organisation from which GlycoEra had emerged remained part of its financial story.

The financing also changed the board. Mira Chaurushiya, Monique Schiersing and Graziano Seghezzi joined, representing the three co-leading investors. They joined a board that included Gambillara Fonck, Faridmoayer and Kaundinya. A financing round brought new participants into the company’s governance as well as money into its accounts.

There was a familiar connection within that new group. Sofinnova had backed GlycoVaxyn. Seghezzi explicitly recognised the GlycoVaxyn veterans when explaining the firm’s support for GlycoEra. The company was new; some of the professional relationships reached back to an earlier one. That is a more particular story than a founder meeting an investor for the first time.

Gambillara Fonck used the announcement to credit Faridmoayer’s foundational work and the wider team. She also looked ahead: “I look forward to this new stage of our corporate development”. The phrase is sober enough to survive a board meeting. In context, it marked the shift from establishing a business to developing it with an international investor group behind it.

The handoff is part of the story

The next CEO came from inside that board. On May 3, 2022, GlycoEra appointed Kaundinya president and chief executive, succeeding Gambillara Fonck. He had been a director since the company’s inception and had helped define its strategy and raise capital. The appointment came with plans to establish a Boston presence while continuing to grow the Zurich team.

This is a useful place to be precise about titles. Gambillara Fonck is GlycoEra’s co-founder and founding CEO. Kaundinya succeeded her in 2022. The distinction gives both people their place in the chronology and preserves an essential part of the founding story: a company can continue under another leader.

Her own next appointment arrived later that year. Pureos announced in September that she would join its investment team as a partner, effective October 1. The operating-company chapter and the investment chapter have clear dates. Together, they trace a move from leading a young business to working with a fund that backs other businesses.

A different seat at the table

Pureos made the reason for her appointment explicit: her operational experience could benefit its portfolio companies. The managing partners welcoming her were Klaus Breiner, Dominik Escher and Martin Münchbach. She arrived with experience of a sale, an independent company formed after that sale, a spinout and a Series A. The investment role followed those operating responsibilities.

Her stated interest included helping expand the firm through its existing fund and future funds. It was a change in the unit of attention: the executive history centred on individual companies; the new role sat inside an investment organisation with a portfolio.

Board work supplied another thread. She joined MinervaX’s board in October 2022, following a Pureos investment. In November 2024, MinervaX appointed her chair, succeeding Gerd Zettlmeissl. She had already spent two years as a director before taking on the chair’s responsibilities. The appointment extended an existing relationship.

Her current Pureos biography lists her as a partner, and MinervaX’s board lists her as chair. Read alongside the earlier founder roles, those positions give the career a different shape from a simple upward ladder. Executive leadership, investment and board oversight are distinct jobs. Her chronology places all three within a connected professional life.

Experience, passed along

There is also a public-facing part to that professional life. In 2021, Gambillara Fonck contributed as a speaker to the University of Zurich’s BioEntrepreneurship & Innovation programme. Its roster records the speakers’ contributions as pro bono. During the year of GlycoEra’s Series A, she was also taking part in a programme for people learning about entrepreneurship.

Later, she became the first guest in Maurice Thornton’s Leadership Lab interview series. The conversation’s introduction reached further back than the company biographies, describing an earlier ambition to pursue a career in sports. The episode followed her path into executive leadership and investing. A career usually compressed into titles received the space of a conversation.

Perhaps that is the right scale on which to read the whole sequence. A doctorate in Lausanne. A role at GlycoVaxyn. A new company after an acquisition. Another company inside that company, then outside it. A financing, a handoff, an investment partnership and a chair’s seat. Each has a date; each involves other people. Gambillara Fonck’s story continues through the changes of name on the door.