Are We There Yet?

Dannielle Appelhans is leading growth at COUR Pharmaceuticals as the company advances treatments for various autoimmune diseases based on its antigen-specific immune tolerance platform technology. She joined COUR in 2023 as COO and was promoted to President and CEO in 2024. Previously, she was CEO and COO of Rubius Therapeutics and held senior roles at Novartis, including SVP of Global Supply Chain and CTO of Novartis Gene Therapies. She began her career at Eli Lilly and McKinsey & Company. She holds engineering degrees from MIT and the University of Michigan, and an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Nima Farzan brings more than two decades’ industry leadership experience. Before Latigo, he was Kinnate Biopharma’s CEO, where he led Kinnate through its successful IPO and sale, and was president and CEO of PaxVax, where he led several commercial product launches and company sale. Earlier in his career, he held significant roles at Novartis AG, DoubleTwist, and the Boston Consulting Group. He is a director of Keros Therapeutics and was a founding board member of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA in human biology with honors from Stanford University.

Parastoo Khoshakhlagh is a serial entrepreneur and the CEO and co-founder of GCTx, a pioneering biotech company built on technology she co-invented during her postdoctoral research in Professor George Church’s Lab at Harvard Medical School. Her work has been recognized in Nature Biotechnology and GCTx has earned numerous prestigious awards, including grants from the Harvard Biomedical Blavatnik Accelerator in 2017 and 2018, the Massachusetts Life Sciences Innovation Day Prize in 2018, and honors in the Harvard President’s Innovation Challenge in 2019 and MIT 100K in 2020. GCTx’s technology was also highlighted in a Nature Biotechnology News Feature and on CBS’s 60 Minutes.

Noah Tagliaferri is a Senior Principal Consultant at Pliancy, an IT solutions partner serving bold, emerging companies across the US. Noah started his technical career in the U.S. Marine Corps as a data systems administrator before transitioning to the private sector. As an IT consultant, he has provided both day-to-day support and strategic guidance to life sciences companies at all stages of maturity (from stealth to Series A, Series B, and beyond). Noah has a knack for translating abstract technical concepts into accessible explanations, helping clients see technology not as a necessary evil, but as a means to supercharge their business.

Jeffrey Walsh serves as CEO of nChroma Bio, with over 30 years of leadership experience in public and private life sciences companies. He joined nChroma following his tenure as CEO of Nvelop Therapeutics, where he continues to lead the company after its merger with Chroma Medicine. Prior to Nvelop, Jeff was a Venture Partner at Third Rock Ventures and formerly held key executive roles at bluebird bio and Taligen Therapeutics. Earlier, he held positions at Pathogenesis, EXACT Sciences, Allscripts, and SmithKline Beecham, and he currently serves on the boards of Tenaya Therapeutics and Tevard Biosciences. He holds a B.A. from Yale University and an M.B.A. from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.