John is the Founder and CEO of Portal Innovations, a premier venture development engine that builds and invests in life sciences ventures. John is a proven leader with a track record of bringing valuable corporate, academic, and civic enterprises from concept to reality, including Advanced Life Sciences, MediChem, MATTER and the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago. John is Co-Founder and Chairman of Pyxis Oncology (NASDAQ: PYXS), Executive Chair of ClostraBio, and Board member at Grove Biopharma. Over the course of his career, John has successfully raised more than $425 million of private and philanthropic capital and three NASDAQ IPO’s.
John hosts the Lab Rats to Unicorns podcast focused on humanizing biotech and is a frequent key-note speaker, panelist, and lecturer on the topics of innovation, entrepreneurship and commercialization and is quoted often in the financial press including Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Crain’s Chicago Business and thought leadership media appearances on Bloomberg and WGN.