Global Corporate Venturing Rising Stars Awards 2018: Michal Silverberg

“My introduction to Novartis was completely random. I met Novartis’ global head Anja König at a conference in the UK, after which we kept in touch, and everything sort of developed from there.”

In November 2017, Michal Silverberg, started in her new role as managing director (MD) within Novartis Venture Fund (NVF), the corporate venturing unit of the Switzerland-based drugs company, moving on from being senior director for external innovation at peer Takeda Ventures in Israel.

König, who was a GCV Rising Star 2017 herself before being promoted to global head of Novartis following the retirement of Reinhard Ambros in mid-2017, said: “I was impressed with Michal’s pragmatism and enthusiasm, and by the solid portfolio and strong presence she built across Israel and Europe during her time at Takeda. I expect her to contribute her personal drive and enthusiasm to Novartis.”

While being a senior director within Takeda is equivalent to being a partner at NVF, for the Silverberg the move was a step up in various ways.

She said: “Although the nature of my role is quite similar, the brass of what Novartis does is much broader.

“While Takeda is more focused on strategy, Novartis is essentially a financial venture. Novartis also has a wider investment scope in that it invests in all therapeutics, and usually with larger funding rounds.”

Although she had previously spent the last five years working in Israel, Silverberg reported being quite excited about her move to Novartis’s Boston, US, office – a city that she described as “the top place in the world” for healthcare venture.

Silverberg made the first steps of her professional career in 1998 as a government employee for the Israel Innovation Authority. The first ties she made with the financial world through that first job rapidly helped her land two other ones, first as part of a financial venture, and later on within a local startup where she handled business development (BD) and operations of the company.

Having started off with an MBA in Economics from Tel Aviv University in her pocket, Silverberg further completed her education with a master’s degree in biotechnology at Columbia University, New York City. It was that move to the US that, she said, triggered a shift in her career.

She added: “I originally moved out there because I wanted to strengthen my technical background. Later on, I just realised if I am in the US and have the opportunity to work in pharma, I should just get in there.”

Silverberg’s path within the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries soon led her to the Long Island-based group OSI Pharmaceuticals, where she was once again part of the company’s business development (BD) unit, before finally ending up at Denmark-based firm Novo Nordisk at which she worked for seven years.

She said: “At Novo Nordisk, I progressed from being manager, to senior director, to a senior management role. After all this came the time for me to go back to Israel for a family reason, and the timing with Takeda was perfect as they happened to be looking for someone to join their team there.”

Since then, as part of her new role at Novartis, Silverberg is mostly looking after investments around Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, with an occasional stretch along the east coast. She is also looking to build up additional investment in Cambridge, with the goal of strengthening the firm’s local office.

“I think the main change in moving from Takeda was really the scope of my role,” she said. “It is very different to be in a strategic venture as opposed to a financial one, or one that is not sector-bound.

“I am also based in a place [Boston] that for all of us VCs is one of the most appealing ones to be in. A city where you have access to the entrepreneurs, to the large pharmaceutical entities, to everything. A lot of these ingredients simply did not exist back in Israel.

“So while in Boston, things are more competitive, I believe there is also more room for opportunities here, and all the tools for one to be much more effective and become a successful investor.”

In her free time, Silverberg is an athlete who loves pilates and has run two marathons in her life, in New York and Paris. “But I am not planning on running another one any time soon,” she said.