MassBioEd

Erin Colgan has more than twenty years of finance and accounting experience, with more than ten years making strategic financial and operational decisions for public and private, small- and large-cap life sciences firms.

In her current role at Sensei Biotherapeutics, Ms. Colgan leads the finance and operations team she built to transition to a quarterly reporting structure as a publicly held company following a successful IPO in February 2021. She also collaborates with Sensei leadership to manage investor and banking relations, while working closely with the Board on the Audit Committee and Compensation Committees.

Prior to Sensei, she served as vice president of FP&A and commercial planning at Intarcia Therapeutics, running the annual budgeting process as the company prepared to launch a Type II diabetes product. At Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Ms. Colgan held numerous finance and accounting leadership roles. She served as Controller in U.K. operations, supporting the launch of the company’s global CF franchise. There she led the operations team in creating new entities in Europe, Australia, and South America. She also collaborated with senior leadership to oversee all G&A expenses, commercial expenses, inventory cost planning, and global revenue planning and commercial forecasting.

Ms. Colgan began her career in public accounting at PwC where she worked in both audit and business development. She holds a B.A. in accounting from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Wade Brown is the Head of Strategy and Research Operations in Cambridge for Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS), a role he has held since January 2021. He is responsible for Research and Early Development Operations at both the Kendall Square and Alewife sites as well as leading the strategic efforts for the Mechanisms of Cancer Resistance (MoCR) thematic research center in Cambridge. 

Prior to his current role at BMS, Wade spent 17 years at Novartis in various scientific, operational and strategic roles across several divisions including Pharmaceuticals, Vaccines and Diagnostics and the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR). In 2020, Wade led the COVID-19 crisis response team for NIBR. He also recently served as the Global Head of External Research Collaborations, Academic Partnerships & External Innovation. Here, Wade led a global team responsible for providing business guidance and transactional support to enable external scientific partnerships across Novartis’s research organization.

Wade and his wife, Megan, are residents of Needham, MA where they live with their three children. He remains actively involved at his alma mater, Boston College, and is a member of the Board of Trustees at St. Columbkille Partnership School in Brighton, MA.

Kristin is the founder of Powers Strategies, focused on providing independent strategic and regulatory consulting services to clients in both the medical device and pharmaceutical industries. She leverages her technical engineering and project management background to support program development for novel and emerging technologies, including pre-submission regulatory interactions with FDA, pre-clinical test program development, clinical trial planning and execution, and product approvals. 

Previously, Kristin was a strategic consultant at Avania LLC, a global medtech clinical research organization, where she worked to develop comprehensive regulatory and clinical strategies to optimize the product approval process across therapeutic areas that included neurovascular, neurological, orthopedic, cardiovascular, bariatric interventions, and infectious disease. She held prior roles in product development (Procter & Gamble), R&D (Arthur D. Little), process engineering (Anika Therapeutics), facilities engineering (Genzyme), and program management (Worcester Polytechnic Institute). 

Kristin earned her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University and is an active alumna. She serves on several MassBioEd program steering committees and recently completed her term as President of Friends of Shrewsbury Crew, a non-profit fundraising organization that provides support for one of the oldest (public) high school crew teams in the country.  

Lauren is the co-founder and CEO of Propel Careers, a life science search and career development firm focused on connecting talented individuals with entrepreneurial life sciences companies. She has recruited for >60 innovative life sciences organizations to help them hire talent and has coached thousands of students, postdocs, medical residents and professionals to advance their careers. Lauren presents often at conferences and at universities and research institutions on career development topics to inspire the next generation of talent. Before Propel, she spent about 10 years in life sciences advancing drug molecules through SNBL USA, Aptuit, Quintiles, and Absorption Systems. She has a B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Gettysburg College and an MBA (focused in the health sector and entrepreneurship) from Boston University. She is on Boards including: MassBioEd (Chair), National Tay-Sachs & Allied Diseases Association; and Advisory Boards: the Professional Science Masters Program at Framingham State University and NE GWISE. Lauren actively mentors young scientists through groups like the Association of Women in Science and The International Center for Professional Development.