Alexandra de Paz

Alexandra is a Senior Associate at Genoa Ventures where she leverages her synthetic biology background and experience in technology transfer supporting university startups. Prior to joining Genoa, Alexandra was a Research Associate with the Chicago Biomedical Consortium (CBC) where she supported the translation and commercialization of innovative academic projects across the Chicago ecosystem into biomedical products and startups. While at the CBC, Alexandra also interned as a Venture Fellow with Action Potential Venture Capital, GSK’s venture capital fund focused on bioelectronic medicines. Prior to the CBC, Alexandra was the Associate Director of New Ventures at the Innovation and New Ventures Office (INVO) at Northwestern University. In this role, Alexandra broadly supported faculty-led startups and commercialization of university research and led various commercialization education and entrepreneurial training programs. Alexandra managed a $10M university gap fund called the N.XT fund, which provides pre-seed funding to promising early-stage research-based startups at Northwestern. Alexandra also spearheaded and led FoundHer, an initiative aimed at amplifying, supporting, and cultivating first-time women scientist entrepreneurs. Alexandra completed her synthetic biology-focused Ph.D. as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow in Keith Tyo’s lab at Northwestern as part of the Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences (IBiS) graduate program. Alexandra also received a certificate from Kellogg’s Management for Scientists and Engineers program. Prior to joining Northwestern, Alexandra obtained a B.S. in Interdisciplinary Biomolecular Engineering from the University of Florida.