Capsida Biotherapeutics Announces Appointment of Julie Hakim as Chief Financial Officer

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Jan 18, 2023, 07:45 ET

Hakim brings more than 25 years' experience leading finance and exponential growth at both large and small companies

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif., Jan. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Capsida Biotherapeutics Inc. ("Capsida") today announced the appointment of Julie Hakim to the role of chief financial officer (CFO). Ms. Hakim will join Capsida's leadership team and be responsible for directing the company's financial strategy.

Ms. Hakim is a seasoned life sciences executive with more than 25 years' experience shaping, scaling, and optimizing companies, accelerating both research and development (R&D) and commercialization, and paving the way for exponential growth at both large and small companies.

"In her very successful career as a financial executive, Julie has demonstrated expertise in many areas of finance and business – including R&D, product launches, revenue growth, acquisitions, integrations, and workforce expansions," said Peter Anastasiou, chief executive officer of Capsida. "We are thrilled that Julie is joining Capsida as our CFO, where she will direct strategies that help us grow our business and help us unlock the potential of gene therapy for all patients."

"Capsida is a company that puts patients ahead of everything else, and I am honored to be joining this world-class team as CFO," said Ms. Hakim. "I look forward to working with the Capsida leadership team and board on the financial and strategic aspects of programs that bring therapies to patients in need."

Prior to joining Capsida, Ms. Hakim was CFO at Sequoia Vaccines, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, where she worked to raise capital to transform the organization for its next phase of growth. Prior to Sequoia, Ms. Hakim spent 16 years in roles of increasing responsibility at Lundbeck, starting at Ovation Pharmaceuticals, prior to its acquisition by Lundbeck. Most recently she served as senior vice president and head of human and financial resources for North America, which at its peak had approximately $3 billion in gross revenues and more than 1200 employees across several sites with commercial, R&D, and general & administrative staff. During her tenure at Lundbeck, she led teams focused on accounting, finance, human resources, business planning, and operations. She also served on Lundbeck's board of directors for all its North American legal entities from 2019 to 2022.

Ms. Hakim holds a bachelor's degree in accounting from North Central College in Naperville, Ill. She was a certified public accountant (CPA) in the state of New Jersey.

About Capsida Biotherapeutics
Capsida Biotherapeutics is the only fully integrated gene therapy platform company that through IV delivery of a single engineered capsid can target single or multiple organs simultaneously, while limiting exposure to non-targeted organs. Capsida's approach unlocks the potential to treat both rare and common diseases across all ages. The company is exploring using the technology across a broad range of rare and more common genetic and sporadic disorders. Its initial pipeline consists of multiple neurologic disease programs. The company has strategic collaborations with AbbVie, Lilly, and CRISPR, which provide independent validation of Capsida's technology and capabilities. Capsida is a multi-functional and fully integrated biotechnology company with proprietary adeno-associated virus (AAV) engineering, multi-modality cargo development and optimization, translational biology, process development and state-of-the-art manufacturing, and broad clinical development expertise. Capsida's biologically driven, high-throughput AAV engineering and cargo optimization platform originated from groundbreaking research in the laboratory of Viviana Gradinaru, Ph.D., a neuroscience professor at the California Institute of Technology. Visit us at www.capsida.com to learn more.

SOURCE Capsida Biotherapeutics