Dr. Mary Maxon is Executive Vice President at Carnegie Sciences. Previously she was Executive Director of the Biosciences Institute at Schmidt Sciences, where she led a new effort to seed the next wave of innovation in synthetic biology and the bioeconomy. Prior to that, she was Associate Laboratory Director for Biosciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Dr. Maxon has worked in the private sector, both in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, as well as the public sector, highlighted by her tenure as the Assistant Director for Biological Research at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in the Executive Office of the President where she was the principal author of the Obama Administration’s National Bioeconomy Blueprint. She is a member of the International Advisory Council on Global Bioeconomy, a steering committee member of the Organisation of Economic Development’s Biotechnology, Nanotechnology, and Converging Technologies Working Party, and serves as a biotechnology subject matter expert for Eric Schmidt, a Commissioner on the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology. In addition to being a member of the Board of Trustees of Carnegie Science, she is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Standing Committee on Advances and National Security Implications of Transdisciplinary Biotechnology, and a member of the Vision for American Science and Technology (VAST) Task Force. She earned her Ph. D. in Molecular Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley and completed her postdoctoral studies in genetics at the University of California, San Francisco.‍