Rachel Elizabeth Haurwitz

"Since my freshman year of high school, I have been intrigued by RNA. I conducted my Ph.D. research in Jennifer Doudna’s lab where I was the first student to work on CRISPR. Based on work that was done in her lab, we co-founded Caribou Biosciences with two other scientists. I wanted to transition from academia to industry to have a more direct impact through science on my community. Today at Caribou, our goal is to help realize the promise of CRISPR genome-editing technology and to develop new, potentially transformative cell therapies to help patients with devastating diseases. A role in industry provides me the opportunity to contribute to the development of new therapies for patients that could have a meaningful impact on their lives."

"I thought that being a company co-founder would be an amazing opportunity (and I was right!). Founding Caribou was risky. We did not know if we’d be able to raise money, hire a team, and ultimately build a successful organization. However, it was an exciting challenge I feel really lucky to have jumped into. As a company co-founder, and especially as the founding president and CEO, I’ve had the opportunity to work with many talented colleagues and lead Caribou to achieve some important milestones, including dosing the first patient in our phase 1 clinical trial for our first allogeneic cell therapy, CB-010, and completing a successful $350 million IPO."