26 – 100 in alphabetical order: Anne Sissel, Baxter Ventures
Anne Sissel, vice-president and head of Baxter Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of US-based healthcare company Baxter, saw two exits last summer for the unit. Neurological disorder therapy developer Aptinyx filed for a $102m initial public offering in May, while medical device maker TVA Medical, for which the unit led a $15m series C round in 2015, was sold to medical technology producer Becton Dickinson in July.
Set up in 2011 by healthcare group Baxter International with $200m, Baxter Ventures focuses on patient care companies with innovative technologies. Two of its most recent investments were a $132m series D round for medical device producer Outset Medical Outset Medical and a $10m series C round for medical device developer Prescient Surgical, both conducted last year.
Baxter Ventures’ earlier investments include a $38m C round co-led with MVM Life Science for biosensor system developer VitalConnect in November 2017 and a $15m series C round for medication tracking platform developer Kit Check in June 2016, with technologies and therapies to improve patient care globally and with a focus on therapeutic areas complementary to those of Baxter’s hospital products and renal businesses.
Baxter has active engagement and partnerships with portfolio companies, although Sissel could not disclose them yet.
Sissel said: “At Baxter, we embrace innovation at every stage of development and recognise corporate venture serves a unique role in the process. Corporate venture investing allows us to partner with early-stage companies to share our knowledge and experience while learning from their novel technologies and approaches. We believe a strong corporate venture initiative leads to a more robust innovation strategy, as we aim to build market-leading technologies to better serve our patients.”
Sissel was selected to publisher Crain’s Top 40 Under 40 list in 2016. Other Baxter team member on the list was Tom Polen in 2008, now Becton Dickinson’s president and chief operating officer. Before that, it was Rob Davis, now chief financial officer at US-based pharmaceutical company Merck & Co, and Harry Kraemer, former chief executive of Baxter and now a professor at Kellogg School of Management.
Baxter Ventures’ members are no strangers to awards, however. Blake Arnold, then an associate director at the unit and now a director of corporate strategy at gene therapy technology developer AveXis, and Amy Kobe, a director at the unit and now also a vice-president at venture capital firm Baird Capital, were previous Rising Stars award winners in 2018 and 2017, respectively.
Sissel was previously on the founding and executive team as head of finance and business development for Veracyte, a life sciences company backed by Domain Associates, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, TPG and Versant Ventures and eventually listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
Before Veracyte, she worked in the investment banking division of Goldman Sachs and completed more than $200bn in transactions for clients in the healthcare industry, including Johnson & Johnson, Genentech and Qiagen.
Sissel holds an MBA from University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and a bachelor of science degree in finance from Indiana University. She is also a chartered financial analyst.
