Rachel Cervantes

Combining over a decade of experience in business development with a strong science background, Rachel is Erasca’s vice president of business development. She joined Erasca from GW Pharmaceuticals where she was responsible for developing the company’s external innovation strategy and leading its partnering activities from opportunity identification through agreement execution. Prior to GW, Rachel held similar roles at Synthetic Genomics, Egalet Corporation and Inovio Pharmaceuticals. In these roles she negotiated buy-side and sell-side R&D deals, led cross-functional teams in developing and implementing therapeutic area strategy and established key commercial partnerships. Rachel began her career at Merck, where she held roles of increasing responsibility within project and portfolio management, marketing and business development.

Rachel earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Cincinnati, an MBA from the Wharton School and a B.A. from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa.