December 8, 2026
VIRTUAL EVENT
Pedigree or Grit? How Biotech Startups Should Hire
For biotech startups, early hiring is a balancing act: investors want you to stay lean, but they also want names they recognize. Founders might need the help but be reluctant to relinquish control.
And always, there’s the question of what the company needs now or what it will need in two years.
Carol Suh, an investment partner at ARCH Venture Partners, speaks with Maze Therapeutics CEO Jason Coloma and executive recruiter Joanne Yun of Egon Zehnder.
They’ll provide practical perspectives about building an early-stage biotech team, including which roles matter most at each stage, how to attract strong talent before you have the funds, and how to choose directors who will strengthen the company instead of slowing it down.
RSVP and share your questions.
About the speakers
Carol Suh is a partner at ARCH Venture Partners, where she focuses on company creation and early-stage investing. She co-founded Neumora Therapeutics, where she served as COO and chief strategy officer, helping to scale the company from inception to a public clinical stage company. She also co-founded Orbital Therapeutics (acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb) and has helped build Sana Biotechnology and Boundless Bio, and served on the board of HI-Bio (acquired by Biogen). A stem cell biologist by training, she began her career as a consultant at Trinity Partners.
Carol was born and raised in the Los Angeles area. Her parents immigrated from South Korea to the US about forty years ago.
Jason Coloma is the CEO of Maze Therapeutics, a clinical-stage company that uses human genetics to develop precision medicines for kidney and metabolic diseases. He helped found and launch Maze while at Third Rock Ventures, where he also held interim chief business officer roles at portfolio companies, including at insitro, Celsius Therapeutics (acquired by AbbVie), and Tidal Therapeutics (acquired by Sanofi). Jason also co-founded Braveheart Bio and Ollin Bio where he served on the Board of Directors. Before that, Jason held senior partnering roles in oncology at Roche based in Basel, Switzerland. He also worked as a research scientist at Cytokinetics.
Jason was born in the US but spent most of his youth outside the country, including Germany, Japan and the Philippines. His parents (Chinese and Filipino) met and married in Chicago after they immigrated to the US in the 1960s.
Joanne Yun is a member of Egon Zehnder’s Global Health Practice, where she advises pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies on executive and board searches, with a particular focus on R&D and oncology. She began her career as a bench chemist at Bayer AG in Germany before transitioning to business development and licensing at Bayer HealthCare in North America. She subsequently held roles in global oncology business and new product planning. Most recently, she served on the board of a clinical-stage, NASDAQ-listed biotechnology company. Joanne earned a BA in chemistry and French from Amherst College and a PhD in chemistry from MIT.
Born in Hong Kong, she immigrated with her family to Portland, Oregon, at the age of three, where her grandfather opened a Chinese restaurant.