Join the Stanford Biotechnology Group (Website: stanfordbiotechgroup.com; Twitter @stanfordbiotechgroup) on November 17th at 5pm PT for a virtual Fireside Chat with Perry Karsen, who currently serves as a venture partner at Samsara BioCapital. We will be sending out the Zoom link the day before the event to those who RSVPed here.

About the speaker:
Perry Karsen brings decades of successful executive leadership and board experience to his role as a Board Director and Board Chair. He is a venture partner with Samsara BioCapital in Palo Alto, California. Perry has served in senior executive positions in multi- national biopharmaceutical companies, led start-up biotechnology companies, and is a member of the board of directors for both public and private biopharmaceutical companies.

He was the chief executive officer of the Celgene Cellular Therapeutics division (CCT) of Celgene Corporation, a global biopharmaceutical company. Prior to being named CEO of CCT, he served for nearly a decade in other senior executive positions at the company, as chief operations officer and executive vice president, and before that as senior vice president and head of worldwide business development. Perry was also president and chief executive officer of Pearl Therapeutics Inc., a privately held biotechnology company subsequently acquired by AstraZeneca plc.

Perry has held executive positions at Human Genome Sciences Inc., a biopharmaceutical company subsequently acquired by GlaxoSmithKline; Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.; Genentech Inc., a member of the Roche Group; and Abbott Laboratories.

He currently serves as a member of the boards for the privately held company, Escape Bio and the Gladstone Foundation. Perry also is chairman of the board of directors at Jounce Therapeutics and is the executive chair of the board of directors at the early-stage drug discovery incubator, Autobahn Labs and executive chair of Nitrome Biosciences, a private company working on a new class of enzymes. He previously served as a general partner at Pequot Ventures, a venture capital firm. Perry is additionally a past member of the board of directors at the Sonoma Land Trust, the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine and the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, where he also served as a member of the executive committee. In 2019, he was appointed as a fellow in the Stanford University Distinguished Careers Institute.

Perry earned a Master of Management degree from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management, a Master of Arts in Teaching in the teaching of Biology from Duke University, and a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.