# Phyllis Whiteley

> Phyllis Whiteley is a seed investor at Playground Global backing Health Care and Therapeutics. See 1 investments, check sizes, portfolio. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: Angel Investor
- Fund: [Playground Global](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/playground-global)
- Location: San Mateo, United States
- Total investments: 1
- Last investment: Oct 2020
- Lead investor: 100%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/phyllis-whiteley-b5821317/
- X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/whiteleyphyllis
- Website: http://wildcat.vc/team/phyllis-whiteley/

Phyllis Whiteley is a seed investor at Playground Global in San Mateo focused on Health Care and Therapeutics. Phyllis Whiteley, PhD., is a Venture Partner with Wildcat Venture Partners where she provides hands-on leadership in building, investing, and creating companies in the digital health space. Phyllis’ career is founded on her passion for personalized medicine, global healthcare, and transformative life science innovations. She has founded and builtmultiple companies in the United States and abroad.Her executive expertise includes strategic planning, financing, partnerships, restructuring, building executive teams and M&A. Prior to joining Wildcat Venture Partners and Mohr Davidow Ventures, Phyllis was an Officer and Senior Vice President, Business Development, Licensing, and Alliance Management at Perlegen Sciences, Inc. Before joining Perlegen, she served as Vice President, Strategic Portfolio Management for Roche. Over her ten-year career with Roche she held various positions in Business Development based in Basel, Switzerland coupled with R&D leadership positions in the US. Phyllis also held a Senior Research Immunology role with Merck.Phyllis is dedicated to helping social entrepreneurs address the problems of poverty, empower women, and build resilience to climate change. She sits on the boards of the Personalized Medicine Coalition, UCSF Leadership Council for Global Health, University of Michigan School of Nursing Board for Science and Innovation, and chairs the advisory board for the University of Texas Horizon Fund. Phyllis also serves on the board of Alydia Health, a medical device company treating Post Partum Hemorrhage around the world, and is a Global Social Benefits Mentor at Santa Clara University.Phyllis holds a BA in Chemistry and Ph.D. in Pharmacology from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri.

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Health Care | 1 | 100% |
| Therapeutics | 1 | 100% |
| Biotechnology | 1 | 100% |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Lassogen | Lassogen is a biotechnology company exploring lasso peptides as a way to develop new medicines.Lassogen was founded in 2019 to unlock the full potential of lasso peptides as a new therapeutic modality for diagnosing and treating some of our most intractable health challenges. The company is the result of a convergence of technological advancesthat have opened the door to a vast, new, untapped source of novel medicines. | $4.5M | Seed | Oct 13, 2020 |  |

1 of 1 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Better Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/better-ventures) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [First In Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/first-in-ventures) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Foothill Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/tsingyuan-ventures) — VC Fund, 1 deal together

## About Playground Global

VC Fund · Palo Alto, United States

Playground Global is an early-stage venture capital firm backing technical and scientific founders with deep engineering expertise, a collaborative environment, and a first-hand understanding of the intricacies of deep tech. Established in 2015 and headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, Playground’s mission is to transform ambitious ideas into impactfulbusinesses that benefit humanity and the planet. We invest in areas that span across next gen compute automation, energy transition and engineered biology. Playground has been an early – and frequently first investor – in companies that include PsiQuantum, Relativity Space, Ultima Genomics, MosaicML (acq. by Databricks), d-Matrix, and Strand Therapeutics.

5 contacts available at Playground Global.

| Name | Title | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Jeffrey Freburg | VP of Operations and Real Estate and Head of Employee Experience | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/jeffrey-freburg |
| Matt Hershenson | Founding Partner, Co-Founder, and General Partner | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/matt-hershenson |
| Phyllis Whiteley | Venture Partner | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/phyllis-whiteley |
| Bruce Leak | Co-Founder, Founding Partner & General Partner | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/bruce-leak |
| Greg Wilson | CFO | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/greg-wilson-3c71 |

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## FAQ

### What does Phyllis Whiteley invest in?

Phyllis Whiteley invests primarily in Health Care, Therapeutics and Biotechnology startups, most often at Seed stage. Most of the 1 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### When did Phyllis Whiteley last invest?

The most recent investment recorded for Phyllis Whiteley closed in Oct 2020. Shizune tracks 1 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.

### Is Shizune's investor data accurate?

Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

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