Iva Toudjarska, PhD, MBA has over 20 years of experience as a scientific researcher and biotech drug developer. Iva has a Master’s degree in Cell and developmental Biology from Sofia University, Bulgaria, PhD in Molecular genetics from Bulgarian Academy of sciences and Masters of Business administration with focus on Corporate Entrepreneurship from Babson Collage
Iva started her scientific career in Bulgaria’s Molecular Genetics diagnostics laboratory where she was responsible for genetic diagnoses of newborns nation-wide. When a Fellow at University of Connecticut Medical Center, Iva developed a new diagnostic method for Marfan syndrome for pre-natal and pre-implantation diagnoses. She also developed a therapeutic strategy for Osteogenesis imperfect using catalytic ribozymes. And as part of a team identified novel genes responsible for development of several bone morphogenic disorders. Iva continued her work at the laboratory of Dr. Dave Bartel at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical research at MIT and was one of the founding employees at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, the leader in RNAi therapeutics. During her 9-year tenure at Alnylam, as part of a multi-disciplinary team she advanced several programs to clinic, most notably ALN-RSV (a virology program) and ALN-VSP (an oncology program). She led the initiation of two hematology programs ALN-AT3 for the treatment of hemophilia (currently in Phase 3) and ALN-TMP for the treatment of beta-thalassemia. Iva spent 6 years in Biopharma strategy consulting enabling clients to develop strategic insights and decisions pertaining to new product development, portfolio prioritization, clinical development, commercial opportunity assessments, as well as due diligence for buy-side and sell-side opportunities. During her consulting career Iva helped smaller biotech companies raise close to $80M. Iva is currently a SVP at Evotec, multi-national drug discovery and development company, where she leads a new initiative, called BRIDGEs for North America, aimed at de-risking early stage academic science through collaboration with Evotec and strategic investors.
Iva is passionate about coaching and mentoring young scientists. She spent 9 years as a mentor at Healthcare business association Boston mentoring program, currently is a mentor at MassConnect, entrepreneurship program, and has mentored several start-up teams.
