Main caricature of Nina Kjellson, who is speaking at HLTH and is General Partner at Canaan Overlay caricature of Nina Kjellson, who is speaking at HLTH and is General Partner at Canaan

Nina Kjellson

General Partner

Canaan

Nina Kjellson invests in biopharmaceutical and digital health companies that aim to transform care for patients. She focuses on therapeutics for serious and underserved conditions such as cancer, autoimmune disease and life-threatening infections and IT-enabled transformation of healthcare delivery.

As a leader of Canaan’s Women of Venture program, Nina is a vocal advocate for women entrepreneurs and investors. She serves as a mentor to Blueprint Health, a digital health incubator and Springboard Life Sciences, an accelerator for healthcare companies driven by women entrepreneurs. She is a member of the advisory board for the Oliver Wyman Health Innovation Center. Nina is also a 2018 Aspen Institute Health Innovators Fellow.

Prior to Canaan, Nina was a General Partner at InterWest Partners where she had invested in healthcare start-ups since 2002. Before InterWest, she was an investment manager at Bay City Capital, a life sciences merchant bank, and a research associate at Oracle Partners, a healthcare-focused hedge fund. Nina began her career conducting health policy and survey research with the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Nina’s investments include Annum Health, Dauntless Pharmaceuticals, Lycera Inc., PACT Pharma, Tizona Therapeutics, Vineti and WellTok. She serves on the boards of Annum, Dauntless, Lycera, PACT Pharma, Tizona, Vineti and WellTok.

Her previous investments include Ocera (OCRX; acquired by Mallinckrodt), Labrys Biologics (acquired by Teva), Alt12 (acquired by Honest Company), Trius Therapeutics (TSRX; acquired by Cubist), CNS Therapeutics (acquired by Covidien), NovaCardia (acquired by Merck), Aspreva (ASPV; acquired by Galenica) as well as Cidara (CDTX), Eiger Biopharmaceuticals (EIGR), Paratek (PRTK) and Tesaro (TSRO).

Nina was born in Scandinavia and grew-up in the Northeast. Nina received a B.A. in human biology from Stanford University (1997). She serves on the board of Essential Access Health and the California Leadership Council for the Nature Conservancy.

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