Karimah Es Sabar

Karimah Es Sabar is a Series B investor at Quark Venture in Vancouver focused on Health Care and Biopharma. A highly-recognized Canadian life sciences leader with broad global experience, Karimah Es Sabar has had a successful career spanning multi-national pharmaceutical/biotechnology companies, start-up companies, not-for-profit organizations and venture investment firms. She has provided leadership in marketing, business development, strategicalliances, global collaborations, public private partnerships, developing and executing innovation and translation strategies in the life science sector, and in biotech investment.In July 2016 Ms. Es Sabar accepted the position of CEO & Partner at Quark Venture Inc., a venture investment firm focused on life sciences investment, to expand and lead their health sciences enterprise. In partnership with leading Chinese private and public investment banks, one of the largest global health sciences venture funds will be headquartered in Vancouver, Canada with offices in Boston, Hong Kong and Chengdu, to invest in North American and international companies. The fund is diversified to invest in disruptive pre-clinical and clinical stage companies, IPOs and publicly traded companies in the areas of drug development, vaccines, diagnostics, medical devices, health IT and novel emerging convergent technologies.In 2009 Ms. Es Sabar joined The Centre for Drug Research and Development, Canada’s national drug development and commercialization centre, as Senior Vice-President, Business and Strategic Affairs, leading its business functions, and successfully building an array of national and international alliances and strategic industry partnerships. In 2012, she took on the role of President and CEO responsible for developing and executing on the overall strategic direction of the organization. Since Ms. Es Sabar joined CDRD, she enabled new public and private sector funding in excess of $180M, multiple commercial transactions including 6 spin out companies and a M&A, and grew the organization with expanded national and international reach to include partnerships right across Canada, and in 12 countries on five continents – firmly establishing its reputation as one of the world’s leading pre-clinical translational research and commercialization centres. In this vein, Ms. Es Sabar was also appointed Founding Chair of the Global Alliance of Leading Drug Discovery and Development Centres in 2013, an association of international peer organizations dedicated to translating health research into new medicines, the formation of which she spearheaded.Ms. Es Sabar took on the role of leading BC Biotech in 2005, re-engineering and rebranding the organization to LifeSciences BC. As President, she led the organization to its greatest levels of success as a strong business development organization for the life science industry and the scientific research community. Ms. Es Sabar has also held senior management positions with multinational pharmaceutical companies, most notably as Director International Division, and later Head Marketing and Business Development at Pasteur Merieux Connaught [Sanofi Pasteur] based in Toronto, when she championed the launch of two major first in class and first to market vaccine and biotherapeutic products. Ms. Es Sabar also served as Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for a Vancouver medical devices company, Medsurge Medical Inc., and was the founder of two start-up companies in Kenya, both became leading organizations setting new standards in the marketing and distribution of biopharmaceutical products in the region.