JDRF T1D Fund Appoints Ellias as Managing Director

7/18/18

The JDRF T1D Fund, a venture philanthropy fund focused on accelerating life-changing solutions to treat, prevent, and cure type 1 diabetes (T1D) through catalytic commercial investments, today announced that Katie Ellias has joined the fund as its second Managing Director.

Ellias joins from Endeavour Vision, an internationally recognized investor in healthcare and technology, where she was a Senior Investment Director focused on later stage investments in medical technology and digital health for the firm’s €250 million Endeavour Medtech Growth Fund. Previously, Ellias was a Principal at Sofinnova Partners, a leading early stage European venture capital firm specializing in life sciences, and held Board Observer positions in ReCor Medical, CorWave, Shockwave Medical, Stentys, Pixium Vision, and MD Start, a medical device incubator.

Sean Doherty, the Chairman of the T1D Fund, said, “Katie brings a strong background in early and growth stage venture capital investing, and the Fund and the T1D community will benefit greatly from her experience and energy. It is a testament to the leadership to date of Jonathan Behr, the Fund’s first managing director, that we now need another senior investor to capitalize on the many exciting opportunities in front of us, both among companies specifically focused on T1D and in companies with technologies and therapies that could be pivoted to address T1D.”

“I am thrilled to be joining an innovative, mission-focused leader in T1D at a critical inflection point in the research of the disease, and to further their investment program by identifying the best early-stage high impact T1D commercial opportunities,” said Ellias. “As an investor, the T1D space presents a massive opportunity to apply the T1D Fund’s model to help identify and bring new high impact devices and therapies to the people touched by this disease.”

Behr added, “I am excited to welcome Katie to the fund as my partner. Our investment team looks forward to expanding our reach to accelerate our mission to invest in great companies and form a robust commercial market in T1D.”

Prior to her venture capital roles, Ellias worked for more than five years at Medtronic, where she was focused on building its interventional cardiology franchise. She began her career as a consultant with McKinsey & Company, and also worked for Partners Healthcare Inc. negotiating agreements between the provider network and large private payors. Ellias holds a BA from Yale University and MBA in Healthcare Management from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Since launching in January 2017 with $32 million of seed funding from JDRF, the T1D Fund now manages close to $70 million of committed capital. The Fund has invested in ten innovative companies focused on developing life-changing solutions for T1D. Through these investments, the JDRF T1D Fund is demonstrating to donors and to venture, corporate and foundation capital sources that attractive, impactful investment opportunities exist in the T1D space.

About the JDRF T1D Fund

The JDRF T1D Fund (www.t1dfund.org) is a venture philanthropy fund accelerating life-changing solutions to treat, prevent and cure type 1 diabetes (T1D) through catalytic commercial investments.

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