Welcome back to the Boss Ladies Podcast! In this week’s episode, Manasi and Sualeha sit down with Devika Thapar. Devika is the co-founder of Wilbe, the first full-stack venture firm where scientists can access entrepreneurship & career resources, advocacy, venture funding, and lab space all in one place. Devika has been commercializing frontier innovations for the past decade across India, the UK, and the US.

We kick off the episode by discussing the start of Devika’s career in strategy management at Accenture India, and her eventual transition to CitizenM, a Dutch hotel startup, where she developed their North American market entry. Devika then shares more about her eventual transition to IBM following her MBA at Yale, where she initially spent two years as IBM Watson’s Business Development and Sales Lead in Europe, then transitioned to Chief of Staff of IBM Watson Financial Services and Senior Product Manager & Program Director of IBM Watson.

We then transition to Willbe, where Devika speaks more about how Wilbe began as a movement to put scientists in control of their careers and centers scientist-led entrepreneurship. Devika shares more about its work not only with scientists, but also with university Tech Transfer Offices in better supporting scientist founders. Devika then shares more about companies in which she serves as both a founding team member and investor through Wilbe; the scope of companies that Wilbe works with, from companies building sensory computers to redefining the status quo of protein expression; and helping different scientific leaders work to de-risk their innovations.

Learn More About Wilbe: https://www.wilbe.com/