Heather Walsh, executive director, MedTech cohort, leads the MedTech cohort of the mHUB Accelerator Program and is responsible for sourcing and evaluation, as well as program execution.
Prior to joining mHUB, Heather headed up the Medical Operations team at Baxter, managing research grants, tracking and driving medical affairs activities, and building relationships with clinical research organizations. Previous to that role, she built and led Baxter’s External Innovation function that focused on increasing open innovation partnerships across universities, incubators/accelerators, medical centers, and other partners. She supported strategically aligned transformational innovation for all the global business units and for technology platforms. She started at Baxter in a role leading technical assessment teams for due diligence of new opportunities for mergers and acquisitions and venture investment at Baxter.
She joined Baxter from the University of Chicago, where she was the Assistant Director and Head of Business Development in the Technology Commercialization and Licensing group, at the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. In addition to her technology portfolio, Heather supported the efforts of the commercialization team by identifying and managing high-value contacts, coordinating the university’s marketing strategy for the opportunity pipeline, representing the team at multiple partnering meetings throughout each year, and launching a program to cultivate relationships with venture capital groups. She piloted and grew a proof-of-concept fund, redesigned the Polsky Accelerator program and launched several internship programs to leverage the talents of students and postdocs exploring alternative careers.
Heather comes with a PhD in Neurobiology, Pharmacology & Cell Physiology from the University of Chicago.