Jennifer Butler

Executive in Residence
Jennifer Butler
BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI) and Montgomery County are pleased to announce Jennifer Roy Butler as the first Montgomery County “Executive in Residence”—a pilot project dedicated to providing 1:1 technical assistance to Montgomery County-based biotech startups. This is a year-long collaboration between the county government, funding the work as part of its mission to grow the local life sciences cluster, and BHI, a regional innovation intermediary supporting technology commercialization throughout Maryland, D.C., and Virginia. As a new Executive in Residence, Butler will spend six months working closely with life sciences startups and growth-stage companies to prepare them to enter the market. In addition, BHI expects to add at least one more expert to the Montgomery County bench as the workload expands. “Investing in biotech entrepreneurship—whether through grants, infrastructure, or technical resources like this Executive in Residence pilot—is something my colleagues at Council and I are committed to. The innovations arising from our scientists and our smallest startups need to be nurtured,” said County Executive Marc Elrich. Montgomery County and BHI created the position as an offshoot of BHI’s well-regarded National Institutes of Health Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) program, which features 12 experts in various disciplines throughout the United States. The EIRs mentor innovators and helps de-risk the technical and business elements of product development. Butler’s work will be very similar to those roles, and she will tap into the EIRs’ expertise and networks to assist Montgomery County’s CEOs. “From culture creation to customer discovery and everything in between, building a health-tech company is an exciting, challenging, and worthy endeavor. And one that cannot be done alone,” said Butler. Butler’s biotech and pharmaceutical career spans nearly 20 years, with experience at large, multi-national commercial stage companies and pre-clinical startups—all of which have been in Montgomery County. Her experience includes over a decade with MedImmune/AstraZeneca (Gaithersburg). She also established the first US operations (Rockville, MD) for the French company Innate Pharma (NASDAQ: IPHA). She is currently working with a local CEO to grow a pre-clinical stage company in the BioHealth Capital Region. “We are pleased to evolve our long-standing partnership with Montgomery County. This new initiative will maintain a pipeline of commercially relevant technology that will improve lives and grow the local economy,” said Rich Bendis, CEO of BioHealth Innovation, Inc.
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