John Bates has spoken, hosted and coached for over 30 different worldwide TED and TEDx events. His group trainings are world famous and executives from companies like Johnson & Johnson Innovation Labs, Accenture, NASA, IBM, Boston Scientific and more, recommend him to their colleagues as the best communications and leadership trainer working today.

Long ago John fell in love with the Internet the moment it dawned on him what it would do for communication. Since then he has worked with early stage companies as a Founder or early employee, has been instrumental in raising hundreds of millions of dollars in Venture Capital and has always earned the title Chief Evangelist.

He Co-Founded BIGWORDS.com, a dotcom darling which ended up going bust in the dotcom bomb of 2000, and he was the first employee and is a part owner of current Internet powerhouse Goldstar.com. John is a co-author of World Class Speaking in Action, an Amazon best-seller, a guest writer for INC.com and loves making a difference for those who make a difference.

Rachel is the Director of the BARDA Alliance for Johnson & Johnson Innovation, based at JLABS Washington, DC. She is responsible for managing the BLUE KNIGHT™ collaboration between JLABS and BARDA related to emerging technologies in the areas of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) threats, as well as pandemic influenza and emerging infectious disease. Rachel is responsible for collaboratively establishing the strategic direction, alliance management, and oversight of all operational activities related to the collaboration with BARDA, including managing the sourcing and selection of high potential companies and developing global educational programming.

Before joining JLABS, Rachel was the Chief of Staff for the National Evaluation System for health Technology Coordinating Center (NESTcc)—an initiative of the Medical Device Innovation Consortium (MDIC)—that was established with funding from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and was recognized in September 2019 as one of the first collaborative communities with participation by the FDA.

Rachel received her MBA from Georgetown University and MPH in global health policy from The George Washington University.

Prior to forming biomea, Tom managed Investor Relations at Pharmacyclics Inc., where he helped grow the company from a market cap of $6.74B to over $21B, which included the execution of one of the largest biotech acquisitions to date. Prior to Pharmacyclics, Inc., Tom spent 6 years as a medicinal chemist at Gilead Sciences Inc. engaging in novel drug design and drug development of HCV polymerase and protease inhibitors. Tom holds an M.B.A. from the University of California Los Angeles (2012) and a Master’s degree in Organic Chemistry from the University of California Santa Barbara (2007). As a research scientist, Thomas Butler has been awarded numerous patents in the U.S. and internationally, as well as published in top academic journals such as the American Chemical Society Journal of Medicinal Chemistry and Angewandte Chemie. Tom currently also serves a Managing Partner at Point Sur Investors, where he oversees – together with Ramses – a biotech long-only fund investing in innovative therapies that significantly improve the standard of care.

Mike Dybbs is a Partner at Samsara BioCapital, where he invests across all stages of the life science sector from seed stage to public equities. He currently serves on the board of a number of Samsara portfolio companies, including: Enara Bio, IONpath, Levo Therapeutics, Nkarta Therapeutics and Sutro (STRO).

Prior to Samsara, Mike was a Partner at New Leaf Venture Partners. Mike has served on the boards of Versartis (VSAR), Dimension Therapeutics (DMTX), Advanced Cell Diagnostics (acquired by Bio-Techne) and Principia. Before joining New Leaf, Mike was a Principal at the Boston Consulting Group, where he was a core member of their health care practice.

Mike received an A.B. in biochemical sciences from Harvard and a PhD in molecular biology from UC Berkeley, where he was awarded a Howard Hughes Medical Institute fellowship. His research was published in peer-reviewed journals, including Nature, Science, and Neuron.

Justin Yang is the new Director of the DRIVe Catalyst Office, for which he has served in an acting role since 2018. Justin will be charged with leading a great team of restless innovators focusing on expanding the impact of the Accelerator Network, BARDA Ventures program, and accelerating commercialization of technologies for DRIVe and other BARDA programs.

Justin joined BARDA in 2016, working as the BARDA budget officer and innovation project officer within the Office of the Director (OD). Since his time at BARDA he has worked on projects across many divisions including IEIDD and CBRN. In 2018, he was one of the first members working in DRIVe to assist with the formation of the division. Prior to joining BARDA, Justin has worked both within Government (Department of Defense contractor) supporting clinical trials and research in infectious disease (Influenza, HIV, and STI) and in the private sector for Advanced Bioscience Laboratories, Inc. a subsidiary of Institute Merieux as a co-investigator on the NIAID Division of AIDS Master Contract for vaccine development and the NIAID DMID master contract for manufacturing of biologics. Justin started his career as a stock broker for TD Ameritrade (public securities and equity side) prior to switching to the biomedical research field.