Leen Kawas urges women to not let mistakes define their careers. | Photo courtesy of Leen Kawas.
As both a venture investor and biotech CEO, Leen Kawas is more energized than ever.
Kawas co-founded Propel Bio Partners with Richard Kayne several years ago. She serves as managing partner of the Seattle and Los Angeles-based life sciences investment firm, a company that provides capital and strategic guidance to biotechs, with an emphasis on diverse and underrepresented founders. Its portfolio consists of about two dozen companies.
Kawas is also CEO of EIT Pharma, a Kirkland, Washington-based biotech company focused on developing therapies for serious viral diseases, including chronic hepatitis D and acute respiratory infections. The company’s pipeline of drugs includes lonafarnib and lambda.
Juggling two companies has been a crash course in leadership.
“Our mission is urgent,” Kawas says. “Every experience teaches you something.”
That perspective was shaped, in part, by her previous experience leading Athira Biopharma, a company she resigned from in 2021. An investigation had found that Kawas altered images in her doctoral dissertation and in four research papers she co-authored while a graduate student at Washington State University in 2011.
Under her leadership, the Bothell-based company went public in 2020. It changed its name to LeonaBio Inc. earlier this year and is now focused on developing a drug to treat ALS.
Kawas acknowledges making mistakes but also believes women often face much greater scrutiny than their male counterparts.
“I think a woman’s path in general is much harder,” says Kawas, noting that she was among less than two dozen women who had ever taken a company public at the time. “I think women are punished harder. I don’t want to trivialize anything. I made a mistake. But there was a silver lining. If I never left, I would never be creating what I’m creating today.”
That experience, painful as it was, has strengthened her commitment to mentoring other women in biotechnology. Kawas participates in organizations such as Nucleate, a global community of bio-innovators seeking to identify and empower future and current biotech leaders, and Women in Bio, a network with chapters across North America that supports women working in the life sciences.
She sponsors mentorship initiatives as well and makes a point of responding personally to young entrepreneurs who seek her advice. She encourages women to not let mistakes define their careers.
“We’re all human,” says Kawas, who arrived in the United States as an immigrant from Jordan with little money. “We’re very tough on ourselves. We can’t keep dwelling on things. We need to keep moving forward.”
As a mother of three — two of them girls — Kawas adds that she wants her children to understand that women can create opportunities for themselves and choose their own paths.
“I want them to recognize that their mother created options for herself,” she says. “We’re living in very exciting times.”
