Joanna Wolak

Joanna joined SV in 2020 as Senior Advisor within the DDF Investment Team supporting the management of current investments and building the future DDF portfolio. She brings more than 20 years of scientific experience including over 13 years of drug discovery expertise within the pharmaceutical industry to the team.

Joanna is a former senior member of the Neuroscience group, at Lilly. Between 2007 and 2020 she worked in the Neurodegeneration Group, leading multiple UK-US cross-functional groups, drug discovery programs and research platforms related to Alzheimer’s disease, neurodegeneration, and neuroinflammation.

For several years Joanna uniquely complemented her R&D role with strategic activities related to external innovation. These included developing partnerships with key academic opinion leaders, academic centres of excellence, hubs of innovation in life sciences and commercial partners, driving novel target identification, enabling new therapeutic modalities and joint drug discovery programs.

Before joining the industry, Joanna completed 7 years of academic research focused on molecular mechanisms related to protein misfolding, aggregation and cellular proteostasis.

Outside of SV, Joanna lives with her life partner and two children in Berkshire, enjoying her family life, hobbies and friendships.

Academic Credentials
Joanna holds a MSc in Molecular Biology and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Gdansk, Poland. She carried out postdoctoral work at the University of Bristol, UK, and a Research Fellowship at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Gif-sur-Yvette, France.