Stephanie Marrus

Managing Director, Entrepreneurship
​University of California San Francisco

Stephanie Marrus is Managing Director, Entrepreneurship, at the University of California
San Francisco (UCSF), the leading scientific research and medical graduate school in the
US ranked #16 among the world’s best universities. She is a Silicon Valley life
science/healthcare startup expert who has facilitated the start of numerous companies
through training and utilizing her deep network of investors, serial entrepreneurs, CEOs
and industry experts. During her tenure at UCSF, she has built the Entrepreneurship
Center, a robust program that has touched thousands both inside UCSF and in the
ecosystem, to facilitate the translation of science and medicine into commercial entities.
In 2020 as a response to the Covid situation, she created an online course, “Global Life
Science/Healthcare Entrepreneurship: Virtual Master Class Direct from Silicon Valley”,
that has reached six continents and almost 40 countries. Besides her roles as Senior
Lecturer and Course Director at UCSF, she has taught entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley,
Stanford; and in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Ms. Marrus is a Fulbright program participant; a reviewer for the NIH and NSF; is a
frequent speaker, judge and mentor at global entrepreneurship conferences. She
keynoted the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Australia in 2023 and judged startups
at BioEurope and BIO International Convention in Spring 2024. She is on the Advisory
Board of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization Investor Forum. She co-authored a
Nature paper on entrepreneurship that was published in 2023.
She served as Deputy Secretary for Policy in Economic Affairs under Governor William F.
Weld, one of the top 100 roles in Massachusetts State Government. Her recent
entrepreneurship policy recommendations have been reviewed at the White House and
US State Department. She has written testimony for a House Subcommittee. She
served on the Bulgarian Government’s Innovation and Growth Board.

University of California San Francisco, Valley Street, Mission Bay Campus, San Francisco, California
Prior to joining UCSF, she held C-Suite positions in biotechnology companies in the two
primary life science/healthcare ecosystems, Boston and Silicon Valley. She has been
CEO, Chief Operating Officer and VP Corporate Development for public and venture
capital backed private firms, led partnering and M&A transactions and headed
corporate development, strategy, marketing and communications. Her first industry
specialty was in technology-based companies in Boston, where she held marketing and
strategy positions.
She holds an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and an MA from
Columbia University.

Speech title & Synopsis

Do you have an Entrepreneurial Personality?

Entrepreneurs have distinct personality traits that enable them to withstand the stresses of a startup.  Find out the characteristics that define a successful entrepreneur.  Jensen Huang, Elon Musk and others are examples.