SynBioBeta Speaker
Miki Heller
Co-founder
Brain Repair Foundation
May 2026, SynBioBeta
Speaker
Miki is a strategy and operations leader, and a mother of four whose work now sits at the intersection of rare disease, AI, and brain repair. She studied aerospace engineering at Cal Poly, began her career teaching middle school math through Teach For America, and later earned a joint MPP/MBA from the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School. Most recently, she worked at Astranis, where she spent eight years as Vice President of Operations and Strategy helping scale the company and leading all core business functions.Miki’s entry into biology and medicine came through her son Levi. After typical early development, Levi began a slow regression at age two and a half, eventually losing language, social engagement, motor skills, and the ability to follow directions. After years of advocating for deeper testing, Miki and her husband Jake learned that Levi has DEE-SWAS, a rare epileptic encephalopathy causing near-continuous abnormal brain activity.That diagnosis launched their work to stop Levi’s seizures, identify root cause, and pursue brain repair. Miki and her husband Jake are now building the Brain Repair Foundation to support research, drug repurposing, neuromodulation, and other approaches that may help Levi and others living with neurological injury.
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