Kathy Fernando

Kathy Fernando is the Chief Business Officer at Replicate Bioscience. Prior to joining the company, she spent a decade at Pfizer where she most recently served as Senior Vice President and Global Head of Pfizer Ignite, an innovation partner for biotech companies, focused on building foundational relationships with prospective biotech partners and helping them succeed and reach patients quicker. Kathy’s prior roles at Pfizer include Head of Worldwide Research, Development & Medical Operations and Head of mRNA scientific strategy. In those roles, she focused on strategic initiatives to identify and evaluate new scientific areas of focus, increase the value of the R&D portfolio, enhance R&D productivity and develop an ambitious scientific strategy for mRNA across therapeutic areas. Prior to joining Pfizer, she worked in management consulting, most recently at Deloitte, helping pharmaceutical and biotech companies address business needs in R&D and commercial. Kathy has a Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of Pennsylvania. Her thesis focused on mRNA and HIV vaccine development in Drew Weissman’s lab. She has a bachelor’s degree in biotechnology from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, India. She lives in NY city with her husband and two young boys. She has a passion for discovering new restaurants and playing tennis, a necessary counterbalance.