Joanne Kamens, PhD

Executive Director, Addgene

Dr. Joanne Kamens is the executive director of Addgene, a mission-driven, nonprofit dedicated to helping scientists around the world share useful research reagents and data. Addgene has been a Boston Globe Top Place to Work every year since 2016 when it was voted #1. Joanne received her PhD in genetics from Harvard Medical School, then spent 15 years as a researcher and group leader in Pharma at BASF/Abbott, working on both small molecule and antibody therapies for immune disease. In 2007 she joined RXi Pharmaceuticals and held lab and business development senior director roles there. Joanne has been raising awareness of women scientists since 1998 upon realizing that an entire week had gone by at work and not one other woman had been at any meeting she attended. She founded the current Boston chapter of the Association for Women in Science. She has also facilitated the establishment of dozens of group mentoring programs around the world. Joanne serves on a number of other nonprofit boards including as Vice Chair of the Seeding Labs BoD, advisor to Protocols.io, and the Scismic job board for scientists. She speaks widely on career development, mentoring, and workplace diversity topics in person and via webinar. You can find her @jkamens on Twitter and on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannekamens.