|   MBBS(Hons), MD, FRACP   |   Location: Sydney, AU

Dr Paul Kelly is Founding Partner & Director at OneVentures. Starting with his background as an Australian Physician, Paul has a long history of biotechnology entrepreneurship and healthcare investing, from developing innovation to commercialising at scale and realising substantial returns for investors.

Having returned to Australia in 2010 (after 15 years in the UK and US), he is dedicated to improving healthcare and treatment options for populations across the world. He lives and invests guided by his vision for a better future: through innovation, collaboration, and patient determination.

Paul is an avid reader and can regularly be found immersed in medical journals as well as fiction and non-fiction literature, which he believes “provides perspectives and insights that you would never get from management or business books”.

When he’s not mentoring and encouraging medical professionals to be entrepreneurial, he also looks after the health of our native environment: being highly active in bush regeneration and preservation.

Paul serves on the investment committees of OneVentures’ four main Funds, chairing the Fund III Investment Committee, and leading the healthcare and biotechnology practice across the firm.

Paul is a highly experienced executive and has multiple board responsibilities as either Chair or as a Non-Executive Director within numerous OneVentures portfolio companies. Independently of OneVentures, he is also a Non-Executive Director Garvan Institute of Medical Research

Paul has over 30 years’ experience in developing and commercialising biomedical innovations in the United States, Europe, United Kingdom and Australia. While in the UK and US he led early-stage and mid-stage companies, public and private, delivering strong returns for shareholders and investors as a founder and CEO.

Notably, Paul served as Co-Founder and CEO of Gemini Genomics (Nasdaq:GMNI), one of the world’s first clinical genomics companies, commercialising novel gene-based diagnostic and therapeutic targets. At Gemini, Paul led the company in one of the UK’s largest biotechnology IPOs of the time, completed strategic corporate acquisitions in Sweden and Canada, and negotiated collaborations with some of the world’s leading research institutions and biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. In 2001, Paul led the company’s successful merger with Sequenom (Nasdaq:SQNM), valuing Gemini at over US$250M.

Paul’s other notable achievements include co-founding Agamatrix, now a leading bio-sensing medical device company with operations across the US and South East Asia, and Atomera (Nasdaq ATMR). He then served as President and CEO of Orchid Cellmark (Nasdaq:ORCH) – during his tenure revenues grew by over 50% in 2 years to $60M per annum, and increased the company valuation 10 fold.

While in the US Paul also served as President and CEO of Medcenter Solutions, a US based online medical education and pharmaceutical marketing company.

Before becoming a biotechnology executive, Paul had a distinguished career as a researcher and physician specialising in endocrinology at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, Australia. While serving as a researcher at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, and in his postdoctoral work, Paul authored over 100 scientific publications, largely in genetic epidemiology of common metabolic disorders, which have been published in leading journals such as Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, British Medical Journal and Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Paul has also served on a number of national governmental advisory bodies, as well as on the boards of public and private companies. He served on the Board of Directors of the American Society of Medicine, Law and Ethics from 2005 to 2008. He also serves on the UNSW Medicine Dean’s Advisory Group and serves on the Board of Directors of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research.

|   BSc(Hons), MBA, GAICD   |   Location: Brisbane, AU

Anne-Marie Birkill is a Co-Founder, Venture Partner, and Director of the Manager at OneVentures. She is well regarded for her passion for and experience of working with early-stage technology companies and entrepreneurs including as an expert advisor within the innovation community. She is based in Brisbane, a strong source of technology innovation opportunities.

Anne-Marie serves on the investment committees of OneVentures’ Funds I, II and III and the REM and Risk Management Committees. She is a director for OneVentures portfolio company Madorra and was Chair of the Board of Charm Health until 2017 when she lead the company to an acquisition by the Citadel Group (ASX:CGL). She originated Vaxxas in 2010 and was an observer to the Vaxxas Board until 2020.

Driven by a passion to grow Australia’s knowledge-based economy; Anne-Marie brings 35+ years’ experience in executive leadership, product development and commercialisation, advisory roles, mentorship, capital raising and exits to the team at OneVentures. Her interest in the innovation sector was forged during 15 years in leadership roles in agri-business companies developing and commercialising new cultivars of ornamental, aquatic, food, and forestry plants. Prior to co-founding OneVentures in 2010, she was CEO of i.lab Incubator, having previously spent five years in the senior management team at UniQuest. During this period Anne-Marie developed successful programs and networks to assist technology commercialisation, start-up formation and growth, capital raising and exit. She has experience of senior management and governance in listed and unlisted companies.

A committed advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion, Anne-Marie regularly contributes to thought leadership on this topic including via speaking engagements. For media and speaking enquiries, please contact us.

Her experience and reputation in the technology sector is demonstrated through her active participation in the innovation community. Her current external roles include appointment as an Industry Fellow with The University of Queensland (UQ) Business School, Chair of the Investment Committee for the UQ-lead “Trailblazer” Food and Beverage Accelerator,  and director for InterFinancial Corporate Finance and the PPK Group (ASX:PPK).

|   BAgrSc(Hons), M.P.S, GAICD   |   Location: Brisbane, AU

Sarah is responsible for sourcing life sciences companies and actively shaping their future. She applies her global executional experience and entrepreneurial passion to nurture their success. Her enterprise level leadership experience has been forged over 20 years in a wide spectrum of organisations, including start-up, private companies, ASX and NASDAQ-listed companies, a multi-national pharmaceutical company and university research organisations.

Prior to OneVentures, she was the Asian Business Development lead for Shire Pharmaceuticals (now Takeda), a global specialty pharmaceutical company. Sarah identified technologies and developed collaborations across Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan including playing a key role in sourcing the $300M Fibrotech deal announced in 2015.

Sarah has held senior management roles at Progen Pharmaceuticals, The University of Queensland’s QAAFI institute, Beef CRC and Pyxis Genomics. From 2011-2017 she led the development of the new UQ QAAFI research institute from 32 people to 450 people and a financially profitable position within 5 years. This included leading the negotiation of a complex $70+M staff transfer and research agreement for QAAFI between the University of Queensland and the Queensland Government. In 2012, Sarah spearheaded the IP asset assignment and company wind-up of 20 year $168M Beef Co-operative Research Centre, involving five universities across five state jurisdictions, MLA, CSIRO and Meat and Lamb NZ and pastoral companies. At Progen Pharmaceuticals, Sarah worked collaboratively with the CEO and CFO over several years to secure a total financing of ~$125M via five capital raisings for oncology drug development, and in 2008 led the $22M acquisition of an oncology drug discovery company.

Sarah has a strong understanding of the pharmaceutical, medical device and healthcare industries including key inflexion points, intellectual property, regulatory and reimbursement strategies, business development options and strategic product management. She combines this with the ability to understand scientific information quickly and build credibility with technical experts and industry players. She is passionate about commercialising new technologies, and has the strategic vision and positive energy to deliver under tight timeframes in a team environment.

Sarah is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD) and currently holds directorships with Kira Biotech, QAAFI Advisory Board and Life Sciences Queensland. She holds Bachelor level science qualifications from the University of Queensland and a Masters from Cornell University and has completed a postgraduate course at Harvard Business School focusing on negotiation and decision making.

|   BSc(Hons), PhD   |   Location: Melbourne, AU

Jeannie is an experienced biopharmaceutical and medical device leader with 20+ years’ experience locally and internationally. She is responsible for sourcing and supporting biotech, device and diagnostics companies to achieve future success. Having held senior executive level positions globally, she brings extensive expertise in business development transactions, strategic partnerships and alliance management to support investment strategy. Her operational and leadership experience in research, clinical trial and commercial management has been forged through conducting research at universities, holding positions of increasing seniority in multi-national pharmaceutical companies and from start-up environments in private and listed companies located in the USA, Europe and Australia.

Prior to OneVentures, Jeannie held senior executive and advisor positions in Australia and currently serves as a director for Paranta Biosciences. While in the US she was responsible for global business development activities and successfully licensed a medical device technology to several of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies attracting sizable milestone and royalty payments. She has demonstrated commercial success and operational expertise by building businesses and brands in several therapeutic areas in different geographies. She has a global perspective with strong analytical, regulatory and technical skills, and is passionate about working with and developing teams to support execution of corporate, product and business strategy. This experience has come from working in companies in Australia and the USA including Bristol-Myers Squibb, Mayne Pharma, CSL and CSL Behring, Enable Injections Inc., Paradigm Biopharmaceuticals, Glutagen and Paranta Biosciences.

Dr Joughin holds a PhD and a Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Immunology from Monash University in Melbourne and a Diploma of Marketing from the Melbourne Business School.

|   PhD, Pathobiology   |   Location: Sydney, AU

Dr Lu Li is an investment analyst in OneVentures’ Healthcare team.

Lu supports the Healthcare team by performing quantitative and qualitative research to inform investment, valuation and exit decisions. Lu also assists with deal screening and performing due diligence whilst also reporting and monitoring existing and prospective fund investments.

Lu regularly practices meditation and loves to study herbal medicine. She also paints and sketches in her free time.

Lu brings over 7 years of biomedical research experience in academia to the OneVentures team. She has a strong technical background on research & development in general, and always follows the latest research progress.

In addition, Lu brings her depth of experience for financial modelling and equity research, along with her keen interest in finance.

Prior to joining with OneVentures, Lu joined CITIC’s Biotech Equity Research area as an intern. She later worked as a scientific writer and technical consultant at DeepTech, a new media platform, where she covers biotech startups and latest biomedical research, and simultaneously completed level 2 of the CFA.

Lu received her Ph.D in Pathobiology from the University of Connecticut in the US, where she focused her research on infectious disease pathogenesis.