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MassBio and The Termeer Foundation Announce Peer Network for Biotech Founders, CEOs

Jul 16, 2024

Program to counter ‘isolation’ felt by entrepreneurs, encourage community and ideation

CAMBRIDGE – July 16, 2024 – Today, MassBio and The Termeer Foundation announced the launch of “CEO & Founder Link,” a dedicated network for founders and CEOs of emerging life sciences companies. Through quarterly engagements, the two influential life sciences organizations will provide leaders with networking, education around key topics, and a peer community with whom they can collaborate. This initiative advances the missions of MassBio and the Termeer Foundation to support life sciences innovation at very challenging and delicate stages of growth.

 

“Let’s face it—the entrepreneurial journey isn’t for the faint-hearted. Too often, we hear from biotech founders and first-time CEOs that navigating the vast network of riches locally can be challenging,” said Kendalle Burlin O’Connell, CEO and president of MassBio. “By combining MassBio’s and the Termeer Foundation’s successful track records of support for entrepreneurs and our extensive global networks, we feel that the CEO & Founder Link can have a profound and lasting impact on the ways founders interact and grow with each other in Massachusetts.”

 

“The journey of a founder or first-time CEO can oftentimes feel isolating and overwhelming,” said Catharine Smith, Executive Director of the Termeer Foundation. “These entrepreneurs are required to have a deep knowledge and understanding of topics that extend beyond the science and cures they’ve set out to accomplish. The CEO & Founder Link will be a vital community that will offer members connections, resources, and shared experiences to help our innovators grow together. We’re proud to partner with MassBio on this initiative and look forward to seeing how this group will create positive change in the Massachusetts biotech ecosystem.”

 

Founders and CEOs are invited to apply through an online portal to attend the quarterly events where they will feel empowered and safe to share best practices, workshop challenges, and forge lasting connections and collaborations. Each quarterly engagement will offer a unique, in-person experience that could include networking, guest speaker presentations, or panel discussions. The CEO & Founder Link is now accepting applications, and its first members-only event will take place on September 18 at Cisco Brewers Seaport.

 

For almost 40 years, MassBio has convened, connected, and catalyzed the ecosystem, serving as a platform to source, accelerate, partner, and fund innovation. Twice a year, its accelerator program MassBioDrive connects a small group of groundbreaking founders with a business fundamentals curriculum, mentorship, industry connections, and monetary prizes – all at no expense or equity to participating companies.

 

The Termeer Foundation is a nonprofit organization focused on connecting life sciences innovators and catalyzing the creation of new medicines to solve healthcare’s greatest challenges. The Termeer Fellowship Program supports first-time CEOs who are patient-focused and working to address an unmet need through innovative science and passion. The Fellowship includes mentoring, networking, and professional development intended to facilitate connections, break down silos, and strengthen skill sets for future healthcare.

 

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About MassBio

MassBio’s mission is to advance Massachusetts’ leadership in the life sciences to grow the industry, add value to the healthcare system, and improve patient lives. MassBio represents the premier global life sciences and healthcare hub, with 1,700+ members dedicated to preventing, treating, and curing diseases through transformative science and technology that brings value and hope to patients. Founded in 1985, MassBio works to advance policy and promote education while providing member programs, events, industry information, and services for the #1 life sciences cluster in the world. Find out more at massbio.org and on LinkedIn.

 

About The Termeer Foundation

The Termeer Foundation is a nonprofit organization working to connect the world of healthcare innovators until every patient has a cure. The Termeer Foundation builds and supports an ever-expanding network of biotech entrepreneurs, CEOs, academics, and other innovators because helping leaders succeed will ultimately help their innovations reach patients. Support includes mentoring, networking, professional development, and financial grants intended to facilitate connections, break down silos, strengthen skill sets, and ultimately enable a diverse array of current and future healthcare leaders who bring much-needed solutions to patients. Find out more about The Termeer at www.termeerfoundation.org or on LinkedIn @TermeerFoundation.

 

 

Leadership is about putting people first, especially in biotech. But for first-time CEOs and other biotech executives, that vision can be challenging to achieve while also fulfilling the various other duties their jobs require. Indeed, these trailblazers are working to build a successful company and at the same time improve patients’ lives, often without specific training in how to launch and run a business.

At the Termeer Foundation, we, too, are committed to putting people first by empowering these biotech leaders — through values-driven leadership programs that provide skills competency growth, network-building activities, mentorship, and coaching — to enhance their leadership capacity so they can change the world and deliver lifesaving cures to patients.

This human-centered mission is guided by the life’s work of entrepreneur and biotech executive Henri Termeer, who believed deeply in the power of mentorship and nurtured dozens of leaders throughout his career. Shortly after Henri’s passing, a group of his colleagues sought a way to honor and continue his remarkable legacy. They decided to host a dinner and invited several people who had been mentored by Henri. They also invited a handful of first-time biotech CEOs. At the event, guests were asked to help these emerging leaders — offer support, pick up the phone, give advice. In short: Mentor them as Henri would have mentored them.

 Nobody realized it then, but on that evening in May 2018, the Foundation’s flagship program was born, the Termeer Fellows Program, which now provides support for first-time biotech CEOs and entrepreneurs across the globe. While the current program looks quite different than it did in those early days — for example, this year will include 100 hours of values-driven programming — the core principles of mentorship and connection-building remain constant.

 To date, 61 fellows have completed training through the Termeer Fellows Program. Last year’s class included 13 biotech leaders based in the U.S., Canada, England and the Netherlands; the incoming 2024 class — which stands at 15 — is the largest one yet. Fellows have found the program transformative and say it enabled them to become better CEOs. In addition to gaining skills and connections within the Termeer network, the fellows have discovered support and kinship with peers in their own fellowship cohort — valuable connections they can draw on as they continue on their entrepreneurial journey.

 And it is precisely these entrepreneurial journeys that the Termeer Foundation seeks to influence. By increasing the pipeline of skilled, passionate, effective leaders in biotech, we can cultivate a landscape of companies primed for success and, in turn, create a world that is better for patients.