THREE WHO LEAD HONORED AT SPRINGBOARD 'S WINNERS' CIRCLE AWARDS
Women who dare to be great are rising to the top of their professions. None are more exemplary than the three who are being feted at Springboard's Winners' Circle awards October 24th in New York.
Known to people throughout the biotech sphere as the go-to person for financing and mergers and acquisitions, few could match the performance of Mary Tanner, managing director of Peter J. Solomon Company. Mary started out in health care and biotech more than 25 years ago, significantly before biotech became a hot market. She and her partner Fred Frank built a powerhouse in the field of financing. Their track record includes supervising over 575 transactions, 220 mergers, acquisitions and divestitures representing $250 billion of value. Among her most notable clients are Pfizer is its $60 billion acquisition of Pharmacia; Amgen in its $16 billion acquisition of Immunex, and Roche in its $47 billion acquisition of Genentech. What better advisor could the 165 Lifesciences companies among Springboard alums ask for?
Women in technology likewise have an experienced role model in honoree Marissa Mayer, President and CEO of Yahoo. An engineer and expert in artificial intelligence, she is known for being an authority on the user experience. Before ascending to the top spot at Yahoo this year, Marissa presided over search at Google for 13 years as she led everything the user saw, felt, and experienced when navigating the website. Marissa majored in Symbolic Systems at Stanford, and it is this one of a kind discipline that is a mixture of philosophy, brain science, linguistics and artificial intelligence that hones her skills. As the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company, she is ranked No. 14 on the Fortune Most Powerful Women in Business in 2012.
Not to be overlooked by women in biotech and technology, Springboard's third honoree is a scientist of global renown. Dr. Mae Jemison, an engineer, medical doctor, author, corporate board member, dancer who is fluent in Russian, Japanese, and Swahili and oh yes, an astronaut, defies all limitations. She heads the Jemison group 100 Year Starship, a DARPA project awarded earlier this year to scope out the capability for human interstellar space travel within the next 100 years. Mae describes this 100 year starship as " An Inclusive, Audacious Journey Transforms Life Here on Earth and Beyond." Dr. Jemison is a 2003 entrepreneur alum of Springboard, where she presented her biomedical company BioSentient Corporation. She remains active in satellite technology for healthcare delivery in West Africa, as well as solar power delivery for electricity generation in developing countries.
These three are Women@theFrontier, leading into the 21st century, by daring to be great.
Springboard is a venture catalyst organization that selects, trains and and presents women entrepreneurs in high growth business to raise venture capital