We do not settle for incremental change. We have the bravery to take risks and shoot for the impact we want to have.

We lean into combining disciplines, expertise, and perspectives not normally adjacent. We design our organization to facilitate cross-pollination and cross-collaboration. We reject silos.

Titles do not determine who has a voice. We work on hard, technical problems and have a ton of fun while at it.

Our path is novel and many things we are doing have never been done before. We lean into MVPs and are open to unexpected outcomes.

We value leading with context. We equip people with the context and background necessary to make their own decisions and act in the best interest of Loyal. Empower team to succeed.

Our patients are not just numbers. Our work is intentional, thoughtful, and guided by respect for life. We take our responsibility to pets and pet parents seriously.

Loyal is developing drugs to extend dog lifespan; we aim to build the defining aging company. Loyal was founded in early 2020 and has raised over $50M from Khosla, First Round Capital, Collaborative Fund, Longevity Fund, Quiet Capital, BoxGroup, and more. 

Loyal is working on bringing to market the first drugs intended to extend lifespan (years of life) and healthspan (quality of life). We aspire to build a pharma brand people love around deeply technical products. 

While we are currently focusing on dog drugs, our ultimate aim is to take what we learn in dogs to leapfrog into human aging drugs, and build the company that catalyzes and captures the public’s excitement around aging therapeutics. 

Biotechnology

Education

Loyal

Intern (Open Apply)

Tracey has extensive experience working for startup companies in the medical device field. She previously supported operations/HR activities at Osseon LLC which developed a line of steerable devices to deliver bone cement to treat vertebral compression fractures of the spine. Osseon was later acquired by Merit Medical. 

She also supported operations activities at Claret Medical Inc which developed a device to reduce the occurrence of stroke in patients undergoing TAVR procedures. Claret Medical was later acquired by Boston Scientific.

Tracey Gilfether

Phil Frankino

Julie is a data scientist on the Computational Biology team. She holds a M. Eng. and B.S. in EECS and a minor in biomedical engineering from MIT. She has experience applying ML to health data in industry and research settings, and is passionate about contributing to effective and equitable medicine and healthcare.

Julie Vaughn

Alex is a senior data scientist on the CompBio team with a background in experimental neuroscience. He did his bachelor’s work at Northwestern University and his doctorate at UC Berkeley, where he studied the neural circuits of the mouse primary somatosensory cortex. After graduating, he was briefly a postdoctoral fellow in the neuroscience department at Genentech before moving to CODA Biotherapeutics to start their bioinformatics team.

Alex Naka

Jess Graves

Greg Thouvenin

John Poisson

Laurel is a Clinical Research and Development Associate and Licensed Veterinary Nurse with a BSc in Biology from the University of Washington. She has a diverse background with experience as a nurse anesthetist for the Seattle Veterinary Specialists surgery department, Research Associate in marine mammal biology for Oceans Initiative, and Clinical Research Associate for CASTR Alliance. She is excited to work with the Loyal team and focus on her goal of helping animals while advancing medicine.

Laurel Yruretagoyena

Ellen brings 17 years of mixed animal practice experience to Loyal. She’s a Veterinary Corps Officer in the United States Army Reserve with a wealth of experience in public health and Military Working Dog care. Ellen previously managed clinical development at KindredBio, an animal pharmaceutical company. Ellen completed her DVM at the University of Missouri.

Ellen Ratcliff

Laura Sandoval

Ashleigh Wenz

Venkata Adapala

Mary Harrison

Tennery brings clinical knowledge from both site and sponsor sides to the Loyal team. She worked first as a Clinical Research Associate for Parnell Veterinary Pharmaceuticals, then as a Clinical Trial Coordinator for ELIAS Animal Health before heading to the University of Kansas Cancer Center as a Clinical Data Coordinator. Tennery completed her BSc in Animal Science and Industries from Kansas State University.

Tennery Carttar

Dr. Brennen McKenzie has nearly two decades of experience as a companion animal veterinarian since graduating from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine in 2001. He has a masters in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and is the past-President of the Evidence-Based Veterinary Medicine Association.

Brennen is highly committed to engaging both pet owners and the veterinary community in critically understanding the data (or lack thereof) behind how we care for and treat our pets. Along with teaching senior veterinary and university students, he combines his passion for writing and science communication through various channels, including managing the SkeptVet Blog and authoring a book reviewing the placebo effect and the use of unsubstantiated treatments in veterinary medicine.



Brennen McKenzie

Clinical Research Associate

Francisco Fiedler

Brandon Waldron

Scientist/Senior Scientist, Pharmacokinetics

Executive Assistant to the CEO

Director of Project Management, Preclinical Development

Tony Gonzalez

Raised in Silicon Valley before the discovery of silicon, Ari obtained his B.A. in International Relations in Tel Aviv, Israel, before getting his M.S. in Microbiology at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He worked on pandemic response, disaster preparedness, and public-private coordination for the Departments of Defense and Health & Human Services. He moved to Chicago in 2016 where he has worked as Director of Business Development for the Israeli Consulate, VP of Strategic Partnerships at NOCD, head of Strategy & Partnerships at Kaleidoscope Health Ventures, and as co-founder to a women's health company that sought to expand access to reproductive health care to low-income and rural women. He is also a certified personal trainer, scuba diver, and avid painter.

Ari Cohen

Sunny brings a diverse background from both start up and large company environments. She most recently contributed to the build out and scaling of early stage R&D histology programs developing assays to quantify tissue response to novel drug therapies and medical devices at CODA Biotherapeutics and Neuralink. Before joining starts ups, she worked on Companion Diagnostics (CDx) for oncology at Agilent Technologies. Her passion for innovation continually draws her to cutting edge research and the start up environment. Her love for animals made Loyal the perfect fit.

Sunny Weber

Entonio brings preclinical research knowledge from both site and sponsor sides to the Loyal team. He worked as a Project Manager for MPI Research, then as a Study Manager at Provetica Animal Health before becoming the Owner and Lead Consultant at Marietti Consulting. Entonio completed his BSc in Neuroscience from Central Michigan University.

Entonio Marietti

Erica Andrews

Karen brings more than three decades of animal pharmaceutical experience to Loyal. She spent over 25 years in Pfizer’s Animal Health group before going on to oversee programs at leading animal pharmaceutical companies including Parnell and KindredBio. Karen previously completed an undergraduate degree in biochemistry at the University of Southampton.



Karen Greenwood

Andrew Bredow

Jeffrey Fan

Sudhi Gogna

Jessica brings multifaceted clinical operations experience to the Loyal team from her time at AbbVie, where she worked in clinical program development, clinical analytics, and drug supply. Both her inquisitive mindset and desire to push the limits of what is possible were cultivated at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she received her BSc in Bioengineering and a minor in Chemistry.

Jessica Austriaco

Erin McCandless

Lauren leads our People team. 

She joined Loyal from Airvet, a veterinary telemedicine platform, where she led Revenue Operations, facilitating the strategy and cross collaboration between the hospital sales, onboarding and customer success teams.

Lauren received her BS in Business Administration (with a focus in Information Systems) from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Passionate about both animals, people, and operations, she is ecstatic to be a part of the Loyal team.

Lauren Knight

Head of / Director of Formulation

Matt is a Senior Scientist in Preclinical Development at Loyal with a scientific background in muscle metabolism, sarcopenia and cachexia. He previously was a Senior Scientist at Pfizer focused on developing preventative and interventional therapies for Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and muscle wasting diseases. Matt completed his BS in Biology from Mississippi State University and MS in Biology from the University of Akron.

Matt Peloquin

Ashley Tovar

Director of Quality

Director/VP of Regulatory (Human Health)

Laura Vasquez-Bolaños

Stacy Ross

Divya Shiroor

Michelle Nelson

Luciano DiTacchio

Kristien Dalton

Brian Nenninger

Isabel Lennon

Dina leads research operations at Loyal after working as a translational scientist at Circuit Therapeutics and CODA Biotherapeutics, where she focused on gene-therapy-based strategies to treat neurological disease. Dina received her postdoctoral training at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience in Trondheim, Norway after completing her PhD in Neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco.



Dina Juarez-Salinas

James McMahon

Kenny Vo

Jessie George

Stefan is Chief of Staff to CEO Celine Halioua at Loyal. He did his bachelor's in biochemistry and masters in metabolic modeling at the University of Oxford. Prior to joining Loyal, he co-founded a start-up to help bioscientists design and perform experiments and created a biotech incubator for PhDs and undergrads at Oxford. In addition, he briefly worked in biotech venture capital at Hatteras VP.

Stefan Leape

Katya was trained in rodent surgery at UCSF, where she established a RRV mouse model to study tissue injury and repair to determine survival and disease progression and then adapted that model to the in utero environment. At Neuralink, Katya was the surgery team coordinator and personally implanted BMI devices. At CODA, she served as PI for the rodent animal program, and managed the vivarium facility and staff.

Katya Tucker

Celine founded Loyal in 2019. Previously, she held various roles at The Longevity Fund, an early stage venture capital fund investing in companies developing therapeutics to treat aging. Celine was a D.Phil student at The University of Oxford studying the economics of gene therapeutics, and holds a B.Sc. of Neuroscience from The University of Texas at Austin.

Teams at Loyal