Earlier this month, we posted the first in our series about the Startup Mentoring program that was organized by the Italy-America Chamber of Commerce South Central in association with the region of Emilia-Romagna.
Read about the program here.
Today, we’d like to share this profile of Deborah Mansfield, one of the extraordinary mentors who made this program such a thrilling success.
For this year’s program, Deborah mentored two startups, P-Value and CellDynamics.
See this excellent Q&A with Deborah published by the Houston Chronicle.
Deborah Mansfield is an innovation business development professional with experience in business acceleration, startup methodology, early business funding, organizational strategy, management and scientific research in the life sciences. Coming from over 13 years as a director in the legacy Houston Technology Center, she has served over 400 startups and assisted companies with over $54 Million in funding awards from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund. Her clients in the center’s Life Sciences Acceleration Program have raised over $1 Billion in follow on funding.
Prior to working with startups and innovation projects, Deborah’s research experience included 22 years as a bench scientist in the fields of inborn errors of metabolism and developmental biology at Thomas Jefferson University and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. While at MD Anderson she was promoted to the organization’s Pre-Awards Grants Manager position, Office of Research, managing personnel and work procedures for $90 Million to $120 Million in government grant applications each month. Deborah holds the following degrees: MBA, Management, Our Lady of the Lake University; MS, Physiology, Pennsylvania State University; and BS, Biology, California University of Pennsylvania.
Image via the Rice University OwlSpark website.