Zain Kassam

Founder, ZK Consulting

Zain Kassam

Zain Kassam

Founder, ZK Consulting

Dr. Zain Kassam is an entrepreneur, investor, senior biotechnology executive, and physician-scientist at the intersection of medicine, biological engineering, and computer science. He co-founded and led a healthcare company, OpenBiome, that scaled to become a national supplier, at peak delivering life-saving treatments to over 10,000 patients per year with ~$15M annual revenue. Dr. Kassam co-founded and built a first-in-field biotechnology company, Finch Therapeutics, that resulted in an upsized IPO on the NASDAQ with peak market capitalization of $1B and secured leading pharmaceutical partnerships for AI-enabled drug discovery. He has led Phase I-III clinical trials with top-tier academic collaborators across multiple therapeutic areas. Dr. Kassam is a mentor at Creative Destruction Labs, an investment committee member of the UCeed Health and Child Health Funds, and a steering committee member of the national MaRS-adMare Therapeutic Accelerator. He has experience with diverse technologies serving on the Board or as an advisor to venture capital firms, foundations, and private healthcare companies.

Dr. Kassam received the 2020 Public Health Innovator Award from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and was named to the prestigious Top 40 under 40 Healthcare Innovator List by MedTech (2016). He has authored over 200 peer-reviewed publications, including in leading journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, and Gastroenterology. Dr. Kassam is an inventor on over 15 patent applications or patents. He has been featured on PBS, CNN, BBC, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and numerous other media outlets. Dr. Kassam was the previous Co-Chair of the CMO Summit 360 Summit (2019-2021) which brings together 70+ CMOs from around the globe.