Aliza Apple, Ph.D.

Aliza Apple is the Associate Vice President, COO & Head of Lilly Gateway Labs West Coast. She also serves as the site head for Lilly Gateway Labs’ two locations in San Francisco, supporting the local biotech ecosystem by accelerating drug discovery and development through early engagement with companies and providing tailored offerings to meet their needs.

Prior to joining Lilly in May 2023, Aliza served as a co-founder and SVP of Partnerships, Strategy and Portfolio at Santa Ana Bio, a venture-backed precision biologics company focused on autoimmune disease. She also served as an advisor to the founders of Firefly Biologics. Prior to biotech, Aliza was a Partner in McKinsey & Co’s life sciences practice. During her 9 years at McKinsey in New York and San Francisco, she collaborated with leaders from over 20 BioPharma companies to develop their corporate and portfolio strategies, evaluate business-development opportunities and improve their organizational effectiveness.

Previously, Aliza led the Global Vaccines Strategy & Operations team at the Clinton Health Access Initiative (NGO funded by the Gates Foundation) and oversaw the introduction of new pediatric vaccines across 15 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. She currently serves on the Board of ReSurge International, a non-profit focused on increasing reconstructive surgical capacity in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa.

Aliza completed her B.S. in Physics at Georgetown University and her Ph.D. in Bioengineering at UC Berkeley and UCSF. She completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Cornell Medical College supported by the NIH Kirschtein National Research Service Award.