Irena Melnikova is Executive Director, WWBD and Partner at Pfizer Ventures. Irena is responsible for identifying, evaluating, making and managing equity investments aligned with the future directions of Pfizer. She is an accomplished biopharma and finance executive with over 20 years of experience in equity financings in both public and private markets, corporate strategy, business development, and operations. Most recently, Irena served as the Chief Financial Officer at Umoja Biopharma where she was a senior member of the executive team responsible for all aspects of financial strategy and operations of the company.

Prior to Umoja, Irena served as a Managing Director, Biopharma Investment Banking at SVB Leerink (now SVB Securities), where she provided critical advice to biopharma companies and their boards on equity financing strategies, completing over 80 transactions raising over $9 billion for clients. Earlier in her career, Irena held leadership positions at Sanofi and TVM Capital; the latter - a global life sciences venture capital firm.

Irena brings strong scientific background and proven capacity to work across a wide range of therapeutic areas and technology platforms. She earned a Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine/Molecular Biology from the University of Texas.