ND

Natalie Dakers

Director at LifeLabs

Natalie Dakers is a leading figure in the Canadian health sciences sector. Natalie has been the founding CEO of several high impact and first-of-its kind national organizations including Accel-Rx Health Sciences Accelerator, the Centre for Drug Research and Development (CDRD) now Admare BioInnovations, and the commercial arm of CDRD, CDRD Ventures. She co-founded Neuromed Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company in the neurological space developing drugs for chronic pain and epilepsy. Early in her career she enabled the technology transfer for over a dozen start-ups while at the University of British Columbia (UBC)’s Industry Liaison Office. Natalie is an Adjunct Professor at UBC’s Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Ms. Dakers has served on many public and private boards including BIOTECanada, Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), Genome Canada, Genome BC, LifeSciences BC and others. She currently serves on Augurex, BioTalent Canada, Pender Private Investments Inc., Sonic Incytes, and Stemcell Technologies.

Natalie has continued to support the health sciences ecosystem as a mentor to early stage innovation companies through programs provided by the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), eUBC, LifeSciences BC, SFU Venture Labs, and WXN.

Among her many awards are BIV BC500 (2021), LifeSciences BC Milton Wong Award for Leadership 2019, Startup Canada’s Entrepreneur of the Year 2015, WXN’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women and Business in Vancouver’s Most Influential Woman 2016, 2018 and Industry Leadership BIOTECanada 2009.

Timeline

  • Director

    Current role