In the UK, She Leads the Search for a COVID Vaccine

23 Aug 2020

A veteran biotech investor oversees her biggest venture to date

Re: Kate Bingham (MBA 1991)

Topics: Health-Health Testing and Trials Management, Leadership Operations-General Finance-Venture Capital Science-Biomedicine Innovation-General

Kate Bingham (MBA 1991)

When she was asked to chair the UK’s Vaccine Taskforce back in May, Kate Bingham (MBA 1991) paused. Despite nearly three decades of experience as a life sciences investor with SV Health Investors, the enormity of leading her country’s effort to put a stop to the spread of COVID-19 was daunting. “When I told my daughter I wasn’t sure I could do this, she looked at me and said, ‘Mum! If I’d said that you’d have given me all this lip about ‘don’t be under-confident, you’re just putting yourself down!’ So I was told off by my 22-year-old,” Bingham told the Daily Mail.

In fact, Bingham’s role—working with pharmaceutical firms, planning manufacturing facilities, and making investment decisions—ties in directly with her career experience. “As a venture capitalist, I have to write a personal check into every single thing I invest my investors’ money in,” she explains. “So they want us personally on the hook with skin in the game for everything we do. That sort of approach is actually what you need in this case. It’s government money, not my money, but the mentality is the same.”

Bingham, who grew up in London and studied biochemistry at Oxford University, is also making a plan for when a vaccine does become available. While a small portion of the UK population is staunchly “anti-vax” her primary concern is those who are fearful of how quickly the vaccine is being developed. “The safety of the clinical trials is not being compromised,” she said. “Vaccine hesitancy is something we need to address, especially in ethnic minority communities who tend not to sign up for vaccine trials. So that’s been a big push in what we’ve been doing with the vaccine registry.”

Featured Alumni

Kate Bingham

MBA 1991

Featured Alumni

Kate Bingham

MBA 1991

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