Empowering Venture Capital Associates
Katie Spielberg, PhD is a Senior Associate at 5AM Ventures, where she focuses on both early stage biotech investments and new company formation. Dr. Spielberg currently serves as an Observer on the Boards of GlycoEra and Lifordi Immunotherapeutics. Prior to joining 5AM, she completed both a postdoctoral fellowship and a PhD in Markus Covert’s lab in the Bioengineering department at Stanford University. As a recipient of the Hertz Foundation Fellowship and Stanford Graduate Fellowship, she studied how bacterial viruses help the immune system clear bacterial infections. Dr. Spielberg’s work has been published in Cell Systems and Nature Chemical Biology among others. She received her S.B. in Biological Engineering from MIT with Tau Beta Pi honors.
Hosts Mike Hosteller and Jen Fang enjoy an in-depth conversation with Katie Spielberg, a senior associate at 5AM Ventures. In Katie’s role, she stays current on innovations in academia and the biotech industry to help her team identify emerging fields suitable for investment. In this episode, Katie offers insight into her career path, highlighting the significance of intellectual curiosity and networking. She also discusses the formation of MIT’s first biotechnology student initiative and the potential future shifts in the biotech industry, focusing on the need for increased investment and understanding in the field of women’s health.
Mike is a partner in the San Francisco (SoMa) and San Diego offices of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. He has provided strategic intellectual property counseling to hundreds growth enterprises in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, both venture-backed and public companies. His expertise includes patent strategy, prosecution, and diligence (both buy and sell side) for venture financings, public offerings, mergers and acquisitions.
Jennifer is a partner in the Boston office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. She helps innovative startups grow into successful enterprises by providing counsel to the founders, management teams and boards and by handling the legal and strategic business issues and transactions that arise at each stage. She is a member of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) General Counsel Advisory Board and is a frequent speaker.