Flagship Pioneering Announces Appointment of Kathy Biberstein as General Counsel

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Sep 15, 2021, 11:00 ET

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Flagship Pioneering, the bioplatform innovation company, announced today that Kathy Biberstein will join the company as General Counsel effective September 20, 2021. In this role, Biberstein will bring her significant expertise in leading legal functions in the biotech and biopharma industries to overseeing legal, corporate, IP, compliance, and related matters for Flagship Pioneering and its current family of internally operated companies.

Biberstein previously spent fifteen years at Alkermes, Inc. where she established the legal function and served as Executive Vice President, Chief Administrative Officer, Chief Compliance Officer, Chief Risk Officer, and Chief Legal Officer over the course of her tenure. Her prior experience includes serving as general counsel at biotech company Ares-Serono International, and in the life science law practice at Crowell & Morning. She also served as Chair of the BIO General Counsel Committee Executive Board reviewing legal policy issues relevant to the industry.

"Kathy will bring tremendous expertise, knowledge, and leadership serving as a senior advisor to me and to our ecosystem of internal and spun-out companies," said Noubar Afeyan, Founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering. "Her appointment as Flagship's first General Counsel reflects the growing scale of Flagship's breakthrough innovation and company creation activities, and she will be a valued partner in creating, building, and implementing a best-in-class legal function to serve the needs of our growing enterprise."

"I am thrilled to join the exceptional team at Flagship Pioneering and be a part of its unique experiment in institutional innovation," added Kathy Biberstein, General Counsel, Flagship Pioneering. "I look forward to working with my Flagship colleagues to bring their ideas through the journey from seemingly impossible to real and impactful, and to change lives for the better through our advances in human health and sustainability."

About Kathy Biberstein

Watch and listen to Three Questions with Kathy Biberstein to learn more about what led her to the intersection of law and biotech, and what she's looking forward to at Flagship.

Kathy Biberstein has a degree in mechanical and electrical engineering and began her career as an automotive engineer for General Motors, working on an early prototype of Chevrolet's all electric vehicle. After graduating from the University of Michigan Law School, Kathy joined Goodwin Procter LLP in Boston where she specialized in mergers and acquisitions, and then later moved to Switzerland to join the World Economic Forum in Geneva. While in Geneva, she took a job as general counsel of Ares-Serono International S.A., Switzerland's then largest biotech company.

After moving back to the United States, she served as the chief lawyer for Alkermes, Inc., a public biotech company, and eventually rose to also oversee many other functions including IP, Massachusetts operations, government affairs and policy, human resources and information technology. After 15 years, Kathy retired from Alkermes to run for the Maine House of Representatives, and the people that she met while running for office inspired her to launch a local program to help individuals and small businesses access federal and state pandemic relief funds and unemployment benefits.

Kathy recently served on the Board of Directors of Triplet Therapeutics and as an observer on the investment committee of two oncology social impact funds. She was instrumental as a board member of the Arts & Cultural Alliance of Freeport in converting a historic building into a theater and gallery space, and worked to preserve and connect more than 1,500 acres of conservation land as a director of the Freeport Conservation Trust. She is currently on the board of Meridian Stories, a non-profit whose mission is to teach students digital literacy, and works with Focus Maine, a private-sector led initiative to accelerate the creation of quality jobs in Maine. She was named one of the Fiercest Women in Biotech by Fierce Biotech in 2011.

About Flagship Pioneering
Flagship Pioneering conceives, creates, resources, and develops first-in-category bioplatform companies to transform human health and sustainability. Since its launch in 2000, the firm has, through its Flagship Labs unit, applied its unique hypothesis-driven innovation process to originate and foster more than 100 scientific ventures, resulting in over $212 billion in aggregate value. To date, Flagship has deployed over $2.5 billion in capital toward the founding and growth of its pioneering companies alongside more than $19 billion of follow-on investments from other institutions. The current Flagship ecosystem comprises 42 transformative companies, including Axcella Health (NASDAQ: AXLA), Codiak BioSciences (NASDAQ: CDAK) Denali Therapeutics (NASDAQ: DNLI), Evelo Biosciences (NASDAQ: EVLO), Foghorn Therapeutics (NASDAQ: FHTX), Indigo Ag, Kaleido Biosciences (NASDAQ: KLDO), Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA), Rubius Therapeutics (NASDAQ: RUBY), Sana Biotechnology (NASDAQ: SANA), Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB), and Sigilon Therapeutics (NASDAQ: SGTX).