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John Cornwell serves as a Vice President of Sand Hill Angels.  He is a 17-year veteran of the biotech industry, having held a variety of R&D and BD roles at Genentech and Cell Genesys (a public gene therapy and immunotherapy company and the parent of Abgenix) Previously, he worked in the software and semiconductor capital equipment industries.

Currently, he is transitioning from his role at Cell Genesys to establishing a consulting practice focused on identifying and realizing opportunities in the emerging Chinese biopharmaceutical industry. He will also be expanding his consulting roles with several early stage biotech companies.

Mr. Cornwell has broad entrepreneurial experience, including the co-founding of a successful software copy protection company and an educational software venture. Over the past 7 years, he has been an early stage investor and advisor to several startups, including GeneEd, a biopharm e-learning company, a SEM machine vision software venture for the semiconductor industry, as well as Veritainer, a company developing a system for detecting fissile material in maritime cargo containers. Mr. Cornwell was raised in the Silicon Valley suburb of Saratoga and received an undergraduate degree in Medical Biophysics from U.C. Berkeley. He just completed an executive dual MBA degree program from U.C. Berkeley's Haas School of Business and Columbia's Graduate School of Business in New York City with honors.