Tom Woiwode

Tom Woiwode is a managing director at Versant Ventures, where he previously served as a venture partner. At Versant, he has served in a number of operating roles, most recently as chief operating officer of Okairos, a biopharmaceutical company developing genetic vaccines for major infectious diseases. Tom Woiwode led the process that culminated in the sale of Okairos to GlaxoSmithKline for $325 million. Prior to his role with Okairos, he co-founded EuroVentures, a wholly owned biotech incubator within Versant Ventures and, in this role, served as the founding chief business officer for three biotech companies created within Versant: Flexion (public), Synosia (public, merged with BioTie), and Amira (acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb for up to $475 million). Prior to his role as a venture partner at Versant Ventures, he was a principal and served on the boards of Antipodean, Metabolex and Saegis. Before joining Versant, Tom Woiwode was a research scientist at XenoPort. He currently serves on the boards of directors of Annapurna, Anokion, Audentes, CRISPR, Kanyos Bio and Therachon. He graduated summa cum laude from UC Berkeley with a B.A. in English and received the Departmental Citation for his B.S. in chemistry. He earned a Ph.D. in organic chemistry as an NSF Fellow at Stanford University.