CEO Today Business Women of the Year Awards

USA 19 www.ceotodaymagazine.com CEO Today Business Women of the Year Awards 2019 environment where people feel safe to experiment and fail is critical to the success and longevity of any organization. Also, transparency and the sharing of information so that people can actively create new ideas or build upon each other’s contributions is very important to me. I picked up this concept from my patent training. The US Constitution’s incentive behind the patent system is to allow for the sharing of innovation such that all inventors can continue to build and make improvements. Can you imagine the innovations we rely on today that might not have been invented but for the building blocks provided through sharing? Do you have any advice for promising female entrepreneurs in the world today? I have always followed two pieces of advice throughout my entire career – one, is to have integrity in everything you do and at all times, and the second is the concept of “paying it forward”. In stressful times, we are all tested with respect to the limits of our integrity. It takes true grit to stand up to these pressures but that firm adherence to always doing the right thing is what results in enduring, ethical leadership and strong, trusting relationships. “Paying it forward” is one of my favorite concepts. I am a huge supporter of mentoring women and enjoy being invested in the success of the mentee. Creating a learning and development partnership by providing guidance, motivation and emotional support to someone who desires those things from you is a very rewarding process. Additional advice I can offer to promising female entrepreneurs is to consider your role models and mentors, rely on those you look up to within the business and scientific worlds, absorb as much as possible from women whose experiences inform today’s societal norms, but also trust your own judgment. The world’s first female Nobel Prize Laureate, the first female Fortune 500 CEO, the first female Supreme Court Justice, were shown by history to have faced insurmountable odds blazing a trail that no woman had ever before overcome. They achieved these goals by not just relying on their support systems, but also by having confidence in their own abilities, which is advice I try to convey to my daughter as well as my son as they grow. What are you most proud of in your career? What do you look forward to in the near future? The nature of ContraFect’s origins as a startup requires team members to take on a roving variety of roles. As such, I have also served as the company’s interim CEO and interim Principal Accounting and Finance Officer, creating solutions to business challenges and further developing credibility and rapport with our company’s board of directors. Throughout all my roles, including within the scope of the interim positions, I’ve fulfilled my omnipresent fiduciary duties. My growth at ContraFect is, even today, ongoing. We don’t grow when things are easy, we grow when we face challenges and tackle them. A role without challenge holds no more benefit, no more opportunity for betterment, for the sharpening of our problem-solving acumen, for either the employee or the company as a whole. We are given an important purpose at ContraFect; decisions we make in the laboratory and beyond are ones that will eventually impact those seeking treatment for life-threatening illnesses. Hard work may sometimes lead to dead ends, especially in the realm of clinical testing and drug development, but it is never in vain. I look forward to continuing my partnership and collaboration with all of my colleagues at ContraFect and I feel lucky to work for an organization that empowers employees to make decisions and deliver with the support of our board of directors and shareholders. FIRM PROFILE ContraFect is a biotechnology company focused on discovering and developing differentiated biologic therapies for life- threatening, drug-resistant infectious diseases, particularly those treated in hospital settings. An estimated 700,000 deaths worldwide each year are attributed to antimicrobial-resistant infections. ContraFect intends to address life threatening infections using its therapeutic product candidates from its platform of direct lytic agents (DLAs), which include lysins and amurin peptides. Lysins are a new therapeutic class of DLAs derived from bacteriophage which are recombinantly produced, antimicrobial proteins with a novel mechanism of action associated with the rapid killing of target bacteria, eradication of biofilms and synergy with conventional antibiotics. ContraFect believes that the properties of its lysins will make them suitable for targeting antibiotic-resistant organisms, such as Staphylococcus aureus (Staph aureus ) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa , which can cause serious infections such as bacteremia, pneumonia and osteomyelitis. ContraFect has completed a Phase 2 clinical trial for the treatment of Staph aureus bacteremia, including endocarditis with its lead lysin candidate, exebacase, which is the first lysin to enter clinical studies in the US. Q Q CONTACT Learn more at www.contrafect.com Follow ContraFect on Twitter @ContraFectCorp and LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/contrafect-corp/