Wendy B. Young is a biotechnology, pharma, and life science executive with more than 30 years of experience in the discovery and development of new medicines and research platforms.

Wendy recently moved into venture capital and company creation and is the CEO of a biotech company in stealth mode, Director and/or Scientific Advisory Board Member of several private biotechs, an Associate Editor of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, and an advisor at GV.

From 2006-2021, she was instrumental in building the Small Molecule Drug Discovery division at Genentech. She led numerous drug discovery teams, was Vice President of Discovery Chemistry and rose to Senior Vice President of the Small Molecule Drug Discovery division in 2018. Under her leadership, more than 25 clinical candidates in the areas of oncology, immunology, neurology, and anti-infectives, progressed into clinical development. Additionally, Wendy led the BTK program and is co-inventor of fenebrutinib which is currently in Phase 3 trials for multiple sclerosis. Before joining Genentech, she held medicinal chemistry leadership roles at both Celera Genomics and Johnson & Johnson.

Wendy is an inventor and author on more than 70 published patents and manuscripts. She has won numerous awards, including the National ACS Earle B. Barnes Award for Leadership, ACS Fellow. She has been highlighted as “One of the Top 20 Women in Biopharma” by Endpoint News and “Most Influential Women in SF Bay Area” by the San Francisco Times.

Wendy holds a B.A /M.S. in chemistry from Wake Forest University, Ph.D. in chemistry from Princeton University, and was an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.