Lili Portilla

Ms. Portilla has worked in the area of strategic alliances and technology transfer, since 1989. She has extensive expertise in negotiating and developing collaboration and commercialization strategies for complex, and multi-party alliances and public private partnerships. As of January 2023, Ms. Portilla was named Senior Director for Government Programs at Novavax in Gaithersburg, Maryland. She is responsible for managing U.S. Government alliances for the company. Ms. Portilla had a 30-year career at the National Institutes of Health. She served as the Director of the Office of Strategic Alliances at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the NIH for 12 years. She directed the Center's partnership, strategic alliance, and technology transfer functions establishing NCATS programs and initiatives. She also was Program Director for the NCATS Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Technology Transfer Research (STTR) grant and contract programs with the goal of developing the next generation of drug development and bioinformatic tools and therapeutic interventions for rare diseases. With a yearly program budget is $30M and approximately 50 portfolio companies, Ms. Portilla also worked closely with small business entrepreneurs providing guidance as well as commercialization resources for the program.

Prior to NCATS, Ms. Portilla served as the Senior Advisor to the Director of the National Center for Research Resources and was also the Director of the National, Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, Office of Technology Transfer and Development. Ms. Portilla has also published several papers on public private partnerships. She served as an Ex-Oficio Board Member of the University of Kansas, Institute for Advancing Medical Innovation and participated in the Maryland Life Sciences Advisory Board's workgroup on Federal Lab collaborations. She holds a Master in Public Administration from American University and a Bachelor in Business Administration, double major in both finance and Spanish literature from Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas. Ms. Portilla is also a Leadership Coach, Associate Certified Coach (ACC) by the International Coaching Federation.