Kayj ShannonFounder

United States - Los Angeles, California

Kayj Shannon is passionate about harnessing the power of biotechnology platforms to produce catalytic change in healthcare & develop life saving treatments for patients in need.

After graduating Princeton with a degree in molecular biology, Kayj decided to pursue a career in the biopharma industry & begin this journey as an analyst @ Datamonitor Healthcare – a biopharma consulting firm.

Furthering his passion for Life Science, Kayj wanted to learn how the titans of industry produced therapies at scale & joined pharma giant Amgen in their R&D Strategy group to help with strategic partnerships & business development initiatives. Here he worked with Amgen’s C-Suite team to shape long-term strategy, execute on pipeline development in novel therapeutic modalities, & enabling technologies in emerging categories including: Cell & Gene Therapy (Asimov), Antibody Engineering (BigHat Bio), Single Cell Analysis (Berkeley Lights), & Quantum Computing (IBM, Google).

To extend his business knowledge, Kayj left Amgen to pursue an MBA @ Stanford GSB. While in business school, Kayj spent time as an associate with Alix Ventures, an early stage Life Science venture capital firm focused on investing in startups using biology to advance human health. At Alix Ventures, Kayj helped develop investment theses in Single Cell Analysis, Antibody Engineering, Cell & Gene Therapy - Leading to investments in Zafrens, Mythic Therapeutics, & 64x Bio respectively. He also utilized Alix’s BIOS platform to host several podcasts, publish extensive thought leadership articles, & launch his own YouTube exploring Frontier Science with leading academic researchers.

While at Alix, Kayj had the opportunity to work closely on diligence & support the firm’s investment in Zafrens - A leading platform company pursuing novel applications in utilizing ultra-High Throughput Single Cell Analysis. After Graduating from Stanford GSB, Kayj knew that in his next chapter he wanted to double down on the conviction he developed while @ Amgen that Single Cell Analysis will play a pivotal role in the future of biopharma development & decided to join Zafrens full time as a co-founder & Head of Corporate Development.