This March, in honor of Women's History Month, we' would like to highlight four of the newest companies to join the Pennovation cohort. Each of these companies is founded, owned, and/or run by women. -
- BioRealize, co-founded by Karen Hogan, PhD, is committed to developing technologies to make the field of biology a more collaborative network.
- PolyAurum, under the leadership of its CEO, Debra Travers, is a preclinical stage biotech startup spun out of Penn to develop biodegradable gold nanoparticles for selectively amplifying the effect of radiation therapy in cancer patients.
- Tandem Repeat Technologies (TRTech), led by
Gozde Senel Ayaz, is an early stage biotechnology company focused on the development of ground-breaking thermoplastic proteins to enhance a wide variety of products in the medical industry.
- IAG, under the leadership of founder and CEO, Dr. Olga Kubassova, focuses on accelerating clinical R&D with strategic insights and proprietary methodologies.
Spotlight on Debra Travers, CEO of PolyAurum, LLC:
As the newest member of our second floor Startup Pods, Debra Travers continues to break down barriers and glass ceilings with PolyAurum. Debra is an accomplished entrepreneur and healthcare executive who has been a strong advocate for women in the startup world. One of the cornerstones of her philosophy as a successful female entrepreneur is to ignore the more negative questions that women entrepreneurs often get asked, and to instead answer the positive question that should have been asked.
When asked about the historical women who inspire her, Debra said, "One of the bravest women I can think of is Sally Ride - the NASA astronaut who was the first US woman in space. First of all, she worked in an environment of men - women at her level at NASA were a rarity. And then to climb into a spaceship sitting on tons of explosive rocket fuel and get launched into orbit is just beyond me. Courage personified! On a more personal note, I truly admire Carol Ammon and Mariann MacDonald who founded Endo Pharmaceuticals in 1997. They were gutsy enough to go to DuPont Merck management and ask to buy some of the brands that the mother company was not really supporting. They built a billion-dollar company from that before retiring. They taught me how to ask "why not?" when everyone else was asking "what if?", something I try to do every day."
