Nader Elrashidy

SVP Business Development

Nader Elrashidy is a seasoned biotech and pharmaceutical executive with 25 years of

leadership experience in the life sciences industry. Nader is Founder and Chief Advisor of Viper Advisors. Viper partners with life sciences ventures, specialty pharma companies, real estate developers and investors to assist with strategic business planning, fundraising, business development and corporate development.

Nader’s undergraduate degree was in Finance from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and he earned his MBA from University of Michigan Ross School of Business.

Early in his career, Nader spent 4 years in transaction advisory consulting at Arthur Andersen and KPMG in Chicago, IL, working on behalf of private equity and large lending clients to assess deal drivers and focus on root causes of critical deal issues.

Nader’s passion for the pharmaceutical industry led him to AbbVie in 2003, where he spent nearly 10 years in roles of progressive leadership responsibility across the US pharmaceutical business. His experience spanned roles in sales order management, supply chain, HUMIRA sales forecasting, financial planning and analysis, HUMIRA sales, business development, market research and brand planning.

In 2012, Nader joined Genix Therapeutics as CEO of an R&D stage pharmaceutical firm

focused on development of complex generic injectable drugs. He led the development of generic versions of Venofer and Azactam. Genix developed these complex generic injectable products and successfully licensed them to larger generic pharmaceutical companies for FDA approval and commercialization.

In 2020, as COVID catalyzed a surge in life sciences real estate development throughout the US, as well as a boom in life sciences venture capital funding, Nader co-founded and launched Portal Innovations, a novel venture development engine. Nader built and launched Portal’s brand to the market, as well as expanded the platform to Atlanta, Boston and Houston. Nader was intimately involved with Portal’s portfolio companies in support of strategic business planning, talent recruitment and fundraising efforts.

In 2022, Nader joined Sterling Bay, one of Chicago’s leading real estate developers, to lead its Life Sciences team. Nader developed a innovative strategy to Sterling Bay’s real estate platform, integrating a strategic partnership with BioLabs – a leading biotech incubator company and an initiative to raise an early stage biotech venture capital fund.

In 2023, Nader joined Cooley LLP, one of the world’s leading full-service life sciences law firms, as a consultant, to lead business development efforts across the Eastern half of the US. In this role, he leads efforts to support emerging ecosystems with marketing and programming initiatives, identify and support high quality early to late-stage life sciences ventures and connect them with financial and strategic investors and partners across the country and throughout the world.