EXECUTIVE COACH

Ms. Ellen Wingard is an early innovator in the field of leadership development and has for 30 years coached and advised CEOs and emerging leaders in health care, financial services, consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, technology and higher education. She is co-author of Enlightened Leadership: How Women are Transforming the Practice of Leadership. She is past Board Chair of World Pulse Media, an media channel linking 50,000 grassroots leaders across 190 countries, and a member of the Women’s Leadership Board at Harvard Kennedy School, where she engages with 150 top global corporate leaders on the latest practices in global talent development, gender inclusion and socially responsible business. She is part of the Executive Coaching pool of the Harvard Business School Executive Education Program and has been a commentator on career navigation and intergenerational mentoring to the Committee of 200, the Fletcher School International Business Program, Harvard Kennedy School, and NPR Marketplace. She has also served as a Mentor for the Impact Center a program affiliated with the Federal Leadership Program for distinguished public sector women leaders.

ALLIANCE MANAGEMENT STRATEGIST

Dr. James (Jim) Boyle is a co-founder and the Managing Director of the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute (YEI), a business/educational unit within Yale University that was formed with the mission of mentoring students with new venture ideas and that has expanded to include the development of faculty ventures. Prior to forming YEI, Jim was responsible within the Office of Cooperative Research (OCR) for the licensing and venture startup of a number of engineering-based technologies. Before joining OCR, he developed and actively managed the University’s largest corporate research alliance, managing a large array of both Yale and external scientists in bioimaging-based collaborations. Earlier, Jim co-founded and grew a predictive analytics consulting practice, providing both technical and pricing guidance on new product development to a wide array of Fortune 1000 companies in the scientific equipment industry. Jim began his entrepreneurial career while still a Yale graduate student, developing novel instruments for characterizing trace biomolecules with the support of the National Institutes of Health, and later commercializing these devices through a wide array of OEM partnerships as part of a Yale startup.

BIOTECH  COMMERCIAL STRATEGIST

Ms. Loraine Upham's 30-year career in biotechnology and business ranges from basic research in the Molecular Genetics Research Laboratories at Eli Lilly and Company, to design and marketing of nuclear and fluorescence detection instrumentation at Packard BioScience (now Perkin Elmer), to process and business development at a proteomic start up, Prolexys. In 2005, she co-founded CureDM, Inc. together with two endocrinologists, to develop a novel diabetes treatment which she co-invented; as founding CEO of CureDM, she successfully obtained over $5M in financing and engineered partnerships to conduct basic research and establish the proof of concept for the diabetes drug which is now Phase II ready. Lori received a B.A. in Biology from University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A from Arizona State University. She is a board member of numerous biotech companies and participates on the Investment Committee of the ABQid/CNM Ingenuity venture fund.

  COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER

Mr. Munachimso (Muna) Onyia coordinates daily operations and strategic communications activities at The Sophia Consulting Firm with the singular goal of maximizing client satisfaction. With education and training in Business Administration and Management  from Purdue University, Muna draws from his diverse experiences across multiple industries in the private and public sectors to lead strategic operations management, financial management, HR and recruiting for the firm. Most recently, Muna worked as an Assistant to the Financial Attaché at the Permanent Mission of Nigeria to the United Nations (Nigerian House) in New York City where he fostered international relations and diplomacy between the US and Nigerian governments through diligent operations and hospitality management. Muna is also a volunteer for the Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA).