Bill Haney adds a matching $100,000 contribution to Kristen Hege’s adventurous fundraiser backing women scientists

Bioregnum Opinion Column by John Carroll

Kristen Hege’s campaign to raise $500,000 to encourage the recruitment of women scientists into the Penn lab of Bruce Levine and Carl June is gaining some real momentum as the newly retired R&D executive makes her way along the Pacific Crest Trail.

Bill Haney, the documentarian and biotech exec who helms two biotechs — Dragonfly and Skyhawk — has contributed $100,000 to the fundraiser, matching the six-figure sum that Bristol Myers provided earlier.

Bill Haney

“In these times where dark clouds can seem to surround us, I am grateful to you and Kristen for lighting a candle to inspire us all,” Haney writes to me. “So, in honor of the gifted women scientists with whom I started Dragonfly – Ann Cheung and Asya Grinberg – and Skyhawk, Kathleen McCarthy – I will match BMS and donate $100,000 to the program.”

Hege’s been marking her thru-hike down the PCT with a series of columns for Endpoints News as she makes a sojourn that stretches 2,658 miles, with some interesting diversions along the way.

Levine and June have earmarked the money to help subsidize the salaries of young women who are entering the drug R&D profession at their Penn lab. Hege, who played a pioneering role in cell therapy, has long actively sought to encourage women to jump into R&D. And we’ll be highlighting those new recruits at Penn as Endpoints helps celebrate the advances along the way to the end of the fundraising trail.

Kristen and I are both ready and willing to talk to more potential contributors. While Haney and Bristol Myers have made the largest contributions, a host of supporters has stepped up with small and large contributions ranging from $26.58 (penny a mile, which is great) into the thousands. According to her fundraiser page at Penn — which is handling all the donations — she’s raised exactly $260,981.30.

That leaves us with $239,018.70 to go. Please lend her your support as well.

And, if you haven’t already, be sure to read Kristen Hege’s pieces from the #trekfortomorrow series:

cell therapy
biotech