Student Spotlight: Tracey Mullen Promoted to CEO at Abveris

It’s extremely rare for a CEO and company owner to voluntarily step down to enable someone else to lead the organization because he or she feels that person is more equipped for the role. But that’s exactly what happened in Tracey Mullen’s case at Abveris, a leader in contract research antibody discovery. She has now been promoted from Chief Operating Officer to Chief Executive Officer. 

Creator Garren Hilow, will now take over as the Chief Business Officer. He knew Tracey was the perfect fit for the CEO role because he wanted, “an elite scientist” to be leading his organization. 

“As we move out of our startup phase and continue to stay at the forefront of antibody discovery, we feel that it makes sense to focus on leadership with more of a scientific background–and an EMBA background provides a nice bonus,” says Mullen. 

Tracey has always had a strong passion for science and biology. She is a Chemical-Biological engineer from MIT who began her career in antibody discovery in an effort to combine all of her scientific passions into one role . “I started learning how the body fights illness and I thought it was fascinating. I decided to jump into a startup in the antibody space immediately after graduating college to learn even more, and I’ve been in antibody discovery since then.”

Abveris, a premier antibody discovery CRO, offers end-to-end mAb discovery services. The company operates in the biologic drug discovery space, specifically in antibody therapeutics for development. This includes two recent, ongoing campaigns for antibody discovery against the COVID-19 spike protein.

Tracey joined Abveris as Director of Antibody Discovery Operations in spring of 2018 after deciding to make a big career change and step away from the bench. “I ran into Garren–Abveris’ CEO at the time–just as he was looking to bring on an antibody scientist for a business role. I loved the position so much that it prompted me to jump into an MBA program.”

Quantic was Tracey’s choice because she could simultaneously pursue her career and educational goals. “I found the program to be incredibly valuable because I could stay in my field while fast-tracking my learning, as opposed to slowly learning it on my own or stepping away from industry to go back to school. The knowledge base I gained from the program helps me immensely in my new role as CEO.” 

Tracey’s goal as CEO of the company is to help build out an all-inclusive discovery platform to deliver development-ready drug candidates in industry-leading timelines. “We currently fit nicely into the hit generation space of the overall drug discovery process. Over the next year or so, as we continue to build out our platform and bring on new capabilities, we aim to expand our workflows to enable lead ID and lead optimization as well. Essentially, I want us to be able to grow into a larger space within the industry as a whole.”