Leen Kawas didn’t enter biotech to make a statement. She entered to solve problems. But in doing so—leading clinical innovation, co-founding companies, taking one public, and now backing others through venture capital—she has become a reference point in an industry that remains deeply imbalanced at the top. Her work, both visible and behind the scenes, offers a blueprint for what it means to create lasting opportunity for women in science, leadership, and investment.
Kawas is not interested in token representation. She’s interested in access, influence, and ownership. For her, creating opportunities for women in biotech is not a side project or social gesture—it is a structural necessity. Scientific innovation, she argues, depends on diversity of perspective. And perspective only enters the room when systems are rebuilt to welcome it.
That rebuilding work is present across her career. As co-founder and former CEO of Athira Pharma, Kawas led the company from early-stage development through a successful IPO, becoming one of just a few women in the United States to take a biotech company public. The milestone was groundbreaking, but she didn’t frame it as a personal triumph. Instead, she used it to draw attention to how rare that outcome remains—and how much work is left to normalize it.
Today, she channels that focus through several roles. She is the co-founder and managing general partner of Propel Bio Partners, a life sciences venture fund focused on funding underrepresented founders and ideas. She serves as CEO of EIT Pharma, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company advancing treatments for neurodegenerative diseases. And she sits on the board of Inherent Biosciences, a molecular diagnostics company applying epigenetics to solve unmet needs in reproductive health and beyond.
In all three spaces, her mission is consistent: build, back, and elevate companies that are designed for long-term scientific and social impact.
At Propel Bio Partners, Leen Kawas brings capital to early-stage biotech startups, but she also brings lived insight. She knows how much of the industry’s gatekeeping happens not through formal exclusion, but through informal networks—who gets recommended, who gets the second meeting, who is assumed to be “ready.” She’s working to change that by investing earlier, coaching longer, and opening more doors.
Her model is grounded in proximity. She doesn’t wait for qualified women to find their way to the table. She seeks them out. Scientists. Founders. Operators. She reads pitch decks differently because she knows what it’s like to be doubted. She coaches differently because she knows what gets whispered after a woman leaves the room. That awareness is not theoretical. It’s earned.
Kawas is particularly focused on venture capital’s influence over who gets to build. In her view, the investment world often underestimates women not because of lack of data, but because of bias in what success is expected to look like. Her goal at Propel isn’t to tilt the scale—it’s to reset it. A woman founder with a well-constructed platform, strong IP, and a clear roadmap should be seen as investable, not exceptional.
She also challenges assumptions about leadership style. Kawas knows that women are often expected to perform confidence differently. She’s seen how this can be used to disqualify founders who lead with caution or care. But in biotech—where timelines are long and uncertainty is embedded in the work—measured thinking is a strength. She helps founders own that.
Outside the boardroom, Kawas mentors quietly. She supports women through career transitions, company pivots, and negotiation moments where what’s at stake is not just equity percentage, but long-term power. Her guidance often involves re-framing: reminding a founder that they don’t need to apologize for asking, that protecting the science means protecting the structure around it, that growth comes from clarity, not hustle alone.
She also pays attention to team composition. Whether building companies herself or advising others, Leen Kawas looks closely at who is hired, who is promoted, and who is heard. She encourages teams to move beyond performative inclusion and toward actual accountability—measurable diversity, equitable compensation, leadership pipelines that reflect intention rather than inertia.
In every setting, Kawas resists the idea that progress for women in biotech must come incrementally. She sees no reason why there shouldn’t be dozens more women-led biotech IPOs. No reason why boardrooms shouldn’t have parity. No reason why venture capital firms shouldn’t be designed to fund a broader range of founder identities and approaches. Her message is not “we’re getting there.” Her message is “we’re overdue.”
This stance is not driven by idealism. It’s driven by data and discipline. Kawas understands the economic and scientific upside of inclusion. She’s seen firsthand how diverse teams iterate better, manage risk differently, and build stronger clinical strategies. For her, backing women is not charity. It’s competitive advantage.
And yet, she still sees the gap. The number of women in biotech leadership remains low. Capital allocation continues to favor a narrow profile. Cultural narratives often paint women founders as anomalies rather than indicators of change. Kawas doesn’t waste time lamenting these facts. She builds around them—and through them.
For Leen Kawas, the question is not whether the biotech industry is ready to shift. The question is how many more people will be equipped to lead that shift when the moment arrives. Creating opportunity means preparing the next generation of women to walk into rooms with full ownership of their ideas, their value, and their future.
And when they do, Kawas won’t need to be at the center of the story. The opportunity itself will speak loud enough.
Check out this interview on Principal Post to learn more about Kawas and her work in female entrepreneurship.