VGTI Florida Announces New Director of Business Development
<0> The Alexis Group Consultants, Inc.Gina Alexis, 954-456-2966 </0>
The Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute of Florida (VGTI Florida) is pleased to announce the appointment of Catherine E. Vorwald to Director, Business Development.
“We dedicate ourselves every single day to finding novel treatments for chronic diseases like cancer and HIV/AIDS,” said Mel Rothberg, Chief Operating Officer, VGTI Florida. “We’re pleased to have Catherine onboard. By leading our business development efforts, she will facilitate the commercial translation of therapeutic discoveries so that patients around the world will ultimately be better served and suffer less,” he continued.
Catherine will work closely with VGTI Florida leadership to develop and implement a comprehensive strategic approach including growing the intellectual property portfolio, commercializing therapeutic discoveries, and developing an innovation center, based on the institute’s technology, for new entities and emerging companies wishing to co-locate and utilize the core facilities and expertise available at the Tradition Center for Innovation.
“VGTI Florida has a wealth of expertise and therapeutic discovery potential and I am dedicated to translating these capabilities to industry so that they become a standard part of medical care,” said Catherine.
As an accomplished technology commercialization executive, Catherine brings extensive domestic and international biotechnology and life science management experience to VGTI Florida. She specializes in fostering relationships between the academic and corporate communities. Catherine spent nearly six years as Director of Business Development working on marketing and leasing activities for Wexford Science + Technology, LLC, a real estate developer of university technology research parks. Her career encompasses technology commercialization from a variety of aspects, namely, marketing and business development at companies ranging from Fortune 500 to start-ups, academic research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the University of California, San Francisco and technology transfer at Stanford and Johns Hopkins Universities.
Catherine has served as a board member of two notable technology incubators, the Emerging Technology Center of Baltimore and the Economic Development Corporation of South Florida. She is a former board member of The Licensing Executives Society USA-Canada, Inc., and the LES Foundation. She also founded the Licensing Executives Society Maryland Local Chapter. Catherine holds a Master of Business Administration in Finance from The Johns Hopkins University as well as a Master of Science Degree from Georgetown University and a Bachelor of Arts in Biological Sciences from the University of California.
VGTI Florida is a leading immunological research institute that is on an urgent mission to transform scientific discoveries into novel treatments and cures for devastating chronic illnesses such as cancer and HIV/AIDS. VGTI Florida is an independent non-profit 501 (c) 3 organization located in the Tradition Center for Innovation in Port St. Lucie, Florida. For more information, please visit our website at .