Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025 | 6–7 p.m.
Page Commons in Cotter Union OR Online
The Founders’ Forum is a new series of weekly conversations from the Halloran Lab for Entrepreneurship featuring innovators tackling important problems. They welcome students, faculty, staff, alumni, community members and friends from other academic institutions to join the conversations!
From Idea to Impact: Building Startups that Change How We Diagnose and Treat Disease
Discover how healthcare entrepreneurs are turning breakthroughs in diagnostics, AI, and clinical innovation into ventures that improve lives—sharing lessons in science, strategy, and startup grit.
Speakers:
Graham Powis ’90 P’23 is a Managing Partner of Brookline Capital Markets and focuses on the firm’s public financing and capital markets advisory business lines. Prior to joining Brookline, he served as Head of BTIG’s Investment Banking Group, spent seven years at Lazard as Head of U.S. Equity Capital Markets and nine years at Cowen as Head of Equity Capital Markets where he focused on emerging growth companies and healthcare enterprises in particular. Mr. Powis is a frequent guest speaker and lecturer on business strategy; the equity capital markets, including IPOs; entrepreneurship; and other healthcare, consumer and technology investment banking topics. He received his B.A. in Economics from Colby College and his M.B.A. in Finance from New York University.
Lori Zablow Salles, JD P’27 has served as Associate General Counsel and Head of Compliance for global pharmaceutical firms Eisai and Boehringer Ingelheim and the biotech Mesoblast focused on allogeneic “off-the-shelf” cell-based therapies for inflammatory diseases for the majority of her legal career. Her expertise spans drug development, lifecycle management, mergers and acquisitions, compliance, policy development, alliance and dispute management, R&D support, intellectual property, corporate reorganizations, and complex commercial transactions. She earned a B.A. in Anthropology from Smith College and a J.D. from Columbia Law School.
Michael Paul, Ph.D. ’87 is CEO of MARAbio. He previously co-founded and led Lineagen, Inc., growing it from 2 to 135 employees, raising over $60M, and delivering genetic diagnostic services to more than 40,000 families affected by developmental disorders. A former E&Y “Entrepreneur of the Year” finalist, Dr. Paul has held leadership roles across biotech and technology organizations. He earned his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the University of Utah and a B.A. in Biology from Colby College.
Learn more and RSVP here.
