Phyllis Whiteley

Phyllis Whiteley is a co-founder and CEO of Didimi, Inc. and a Venture Partner with Mohr Davidow Ventures.  Dr. Whiteley has a passion for personalized medicine and transformative life science innovations.   She has more than 25 years of experience across academics, biotech, and pharma in R&D, business, and portfolio management and has significant international experience, having established affiliates in Japan and Europe. Her work in Pharmacology, Immunology, and Inflammation has resulted in multiple new chemical entities and publications.

While an Executive-in-Residence at Mohr Davidow Ventures, Dr. Whiteley provided hands-on leadership in building and creating multiple companies in diagnostics and personalized medicine including Verinata Health (acquired by Illumina).  Dr. Whiteley previously co-founded RuiYi (previously named Anaphore) with 5AM Ventures.

Prior to her work in venture capital, Dr. Whiteley was an Officer and Senior Vice President, Business Development, Licensing, and Alliance Management at Perlegen Sciences, Inc.    Before joining Perlegen, she served as Vice President, Strategic Portfolio Management for F. Hoffman La Roche. During her ten years with Roche she held various positions in Business Development based in Basel, Switzerland and R&D leadership positions in the US.  Prior to her Roche tenure, Dr. Whiteley held a Senior Research Immunology role with Merck. 

Dr. Whiteley serves on multiple boards and advisory roles including Didimi,  Balance Therapeutics, VitaPath Genetics, The Personalized Medicine Coalition (emeritus), UCSF  T1 Catalyst  Program, Coulter Foundation Business Advisor, and Springboard Enterprises.  She is also a Global Social Benefit Incubator (GSBI) mentor at Santa Clara University.   She received her BA in Chemistry and PhD in Pharmacology from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.