M. Patricia Beckmann
Patricia earned her BA in biology, chemistry and art from The Evergreen State College and her PhD in biochemistry and pharmacology from the University of Arizona, College of Medicine. She is a two-time Fulbright Scholar pursuing studies in with Dr. Carl-Henrik Heldin (Chair of the Nobel Foundation) in Uppsala, Sweden and was a Visiting Scientist at the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute.
Dr. Patricia Beckmann brings an extensive background in biotechnology, both as a scientist and a venture capitalist. Her current role is as Managing Director of BioStrategy, a boutique consulting firm focused on biotechnology start-up companies. She served in numerous management positions at Immunex Corporation and Amgen, was a member of the team that discovered EnbrelTM, Amgen’s arthritis drug (peak sales ~$8B) and was awarded National Inventor of the Year in 2000 from the Intellectual Property Owner’s Association. She was an Investment Specialist at Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital (deploying over $120M in various investment vehicles) and a member of the original strategy team establishing the endowed Allen Institute for Brain Sciences in Seattle. She was also founding Chief Scientific Officer at proteomics and biomarker company Homestead Clinical (now Integrated Diagnostics), funded by the venture-backed Accelerator Corp. From 2008-2012 she was President of the state-funded Oregon Translational Research and Development Institute (OTRADI) where she developed an incubator model for university bioscience start-ups and received the prestigious Department of Commerce i6 Challenge Award for OTRADI. She founded the Life Science Washington Institute in 2017, an organization solely dedicated to fostering entrepreneur development.
Patricia serves on the National Advisory Council for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (NACIE) advising the U.S. Secretary of Commerce and the
Boards of Fe Pharmaceuticals (examining iron depletion as core to many disease states) and TheraCea (a radiochemistry company with highly efficient fluorine-18 labeling for biomedical imaging). Previously she was on the Boards of Cancer Research and Biostatistics, the Drug and Device Advisory Council of the Institute for Translational and Health Sciences at University of Washington, and the Advisory Board of Northwest Technology Ventures. She earned her PhD in biochemistry and pharmacology from the University of Arizona, College of Medicine, is a two-time Fulbright Fellowship recipient (Sweden and India), an NRSA Fellow at the National Cancer Institute and was a Kauffman Fellow in Class 12. She has over 50 peer-reviewed scientific publications and more than 40 issued U.S. Patents. On a personal note, Patricia raises golden retrievers and loves great red wines.
Patricia was a member of Class 12. She served her fellowship under mentors Bill Newman at Northwest Technology Ventures and Carl Weissman at Accelerator Corporation.