Mary Haak-Frendscho is an entrepreneurial biotechnology executive experienced in both private and public companies with a background ranging from start-ups to global organizations. Mary is a proficient company builder and board member. She has a performance history for increasing corporate valuation through asset creation spanning target selection to pre-clinical development and ultimately delivery of innovative clinical drug candidates across multiple therapeutic areas. Currently, Mary is President, CEO and a Board member of Spotlight Therapeutics, a discovery and preclinical stage company developing a new precision biologics class of antibody-directed CRISPR ribonucleoproteins for in vivo gene editing to treat monogenic human diseases and solid tumors. She also serves on the Boards of Surrozen Therapeutics and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. Previously, Mary was a venture partner with Versant Ventures and CEO of Blueline, a Versant vehicle for new company creation anchored in Canadian science, such as Repare Therapeutics (RPTX). Mary served on the Board of Northern Biologics, acquired by BI, as a member of the Finance and Compensation committees. Mary established the US subsidiary of Compugen, Ltd. and served as Board Chair playing a key role in securing the $530M collaboration with Bayer. As CEO of Ingenica she led their successful transition to a clinical stage company. Mary established and led Takeda’s Center of Excellence for biologics as founding President, CSO and Board member, delivering three first-in-class antibody programs and overseeing the CMC to support IND filing for a legacy program. As CSO at XOMA, she redesigned the Preclinical teams, secured, and guided four corporate-funded strategic partnerships transforming the Preclinical function from a cost center to a profit center while building the proprietary pipeline, including gevokizumab, later licensed to Novartis. In various scientific roles, Mary contributed to the non-clinical development of panitumumab and denosumab while at Abgenix (acquired by Amgen) and omalizumab at Genentech.