Mara Aspinall
Mara Aspinall is a biotech industry executive and healthcare pioneer. She is president and CEO of HealthCatalysts, a firm dedicated to the growth of new healthcare companies. Aspinall is also executive chairman of GenePeeks, a computational genomics company creating a paradigm shift in genetic testing and personalized medicine. GenePeeks’ proprietary technology can identify the risk of passing on monogenic disease to progeny pre-conception through data mining the maternal and paternal genomes.
Aspinall is the former president and CEO of Ventana Medical Systems division of Roche, worldwide leader in development and commercialization of tissue-based cancer diagnostics. She previously spent 12 years as president of Genzyme Genetics and Genzyme Pharmaceuticals. Genzyme Genetics set the standard for quality in the diagnostics industry, leading the market in prenatal and cancer testing. The business was sold to LabCorp for $1 billion.
Aspinall is a member of the board of directors of Safeguard Scientifics (NYSE:SFE), Abcam plc (AIM:ABC), Blue Cross Blue Shield Arizona, Castle Biosciences and SenesTech.
Aspinall is passionate about educating the health care community on the importance of diagnostics and personalized medicine. To that end, Aspinall co-founded the International School of Biomedical Diagnostics at Arizona State University, the first school dedicated entirely to diagnostics as an independent discipline. The school awarded their first Master's degrees in 2015. She is also co-founder of EPEMED, the European Personalized Medicine Association.
Within Arizona, Aspinall is the chair of the Arizona Biosciences Board, a CEO group focused on increasing capital in the state for innovation based technology companies.
Aspinall is a frequent national speaker and named one of “100 Most Inspiring People in Life Sciences” by PharmaVOICE.