Life Sciences Luncheon with Susan Stipa, Phylloceuticals
uCity Square is hosting an intimate luncheon series for a small but mighty group of curious life science enthusiasts. Join us to dine with our weekly celebrity in the life science field!
For our November session we'll be joined by Susan Stipa, CEO of Phylloceuticals, where we'll explore how non-linear leadership is a strategic differentiator. Deep technical fluency gives you scientific integrity, but when you take an engineer and move her into the creative space, how does that affect her leadership style, operational grit and authentic connectivity with investors when she decides to upend the pharma status quo?
This is the conversation we'll have with Susan. Join us to learn how leading across a seemingly disparate set of leadership roles has enhanced her ability to quickly spot roadblocks and costly organizational blind spots.
Who should attend? Local scientists, entrepreneurs, and students interested in hearing from local experts and mingling with some of the leading voices in Philly's life science fields.
Participation Fee: Free
Time: 11:30-12:30pm
Location: uCity Square (exact location included in confirmation email)
Limited slots! Reserve now! 15 people per lunch.
Once registered, if you have been selected, you will receive an email invitation with details on the luncheon you have been selected for.
Susan's Background:
Susan began her career as a process chemical engineer at Roche, the largest Vitamin C facility in the world at the time. She was later named Commercial Director for Foster Wheeler Biokinetics, a pharmaceutical engineering firm embedded in the earliest days of biotechnology design and construction. She traveled the world, developing opportunities for the company. Her final project was bidding on a $1Bn blood plasma facility. She coordinated the first partnership for FW that offered a modular construction option alongside the traditional “stick-built” pharma project. Through this alliance with modular cleanroom manufacturer G-Con she cemented her reputation as an out-of-the-box thinker in a straight-laced pharmaceutical world.
She then launched her own communications consulting firm, McDay which focused exclusively on life sciences public relations, branding and corporate event planning. Her engineering background found her at the nexus of translating scientists’ work to the press, and she built strong relations with key journalists in the space. The firm won multiple awards throughout its seven years, including the Emerald Ingenuity award from the Irish Echo and Best Pharmaceutical Communications & PR Agency in the Mid-Atlantic USA (Biotechnology 2020 Awards). McDay was acquired in 2020 by CGLife, a science communications firm based in Chicago and San Diego. Susan built their life sciences PR practice from the ground up, hiring over a dozen PR professionals, and training many with non-PR backgrounds who showed the creative spark and imperviousness to “no” that is required in earned media and corporate comms. Her team launched many start ups, including work for Colossal Bio and Enveda, where critical placement of numerous early articles helped tell her clients’ stories.
She then decided to launch her own biotech company, Phylloceuticals. With a team of eight, Susan has spent the last year raising funds, and creating dual messaging to both patients and pharma about how medicine is made today, and what the potential is for manufacturing biologics at a much reduced cost inside plant cells. True to her PR background, articles in GEN and press coverage around putting up a pilot facility and producing a first recognizable biologics product in 16 weeks have indeed caught the attention of the industry.