BEDFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Stoke Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: STOK), a biotechnology company pioneering a new way to treat the underlying cause of severe genetic diseases by precisely upregulating protein expression, today announced the appointments of Robin A. Walker, J.D., as Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer, and Joan Wood as Head of Human Resources.
“Robin and Joan bring deep knowledge of the biopharmaceutical industry and an infectious enthusiasm for building a culture of innovation. Their professional experience working in companies at different stages of the biotech life cycle will be essential to Stoke as we scale the organization to realize the full potential of our science for people living with Dravet syndrome and other severe genetic diseases,” said Edward M. Kaye, M.D., Chief Executive Officer of Stoke Therapeutics.
Ms. Walker is an accomplished biotechnology executive and lawyer, with 20 years of in-house and major law firm experience. She joins Stoke from Casebia Therapeutics, where she served as Senior Vice President, Head of Legal and counseled the executive leadership team on corporate, governance, employment, compliance and regulatory matters. Ms. Walker has extensive experience with business law, including commercial, research, development, licensing and collaboration agreements and Securities and Exchange Commission reporting. Prior to Casebia, Ms. Walker was the Associate General Counsel, Corporate, at Biogen Inc., where she provided day-to-day support to multiple business units, including Business Development, Government Affairs, Corporate Compliance, Human Resources, Grants Office, Public Affairs, and the Biogen Idec Foundation. Earlier, Ms. Walker was Senior Corporate Counsel at Staples, Inc., and a Corporate Associate in the Boston office of K&L Gates, an international law firm. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Northeast Chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC), the Kendall Square Association and the Shady Hill School, and sits on the Dean’s Advisory Committee at Boston University School of Law. Ms. Walker holds her B.A. in History from Vassar College and her J.D. from Boston University School of Law.
Ms. Wood is a global human resources leader, with more than 20 years of experience developing and leading international human resources teams. Most recently, Ms. Wood served as Senior Vice President, Chief Human Resources Officer at Karyopharm Therapeutics Inc., where she was responsible for the company’s human resources strategy and operations, with a focus on talent acquisition, executive and leadership development and employee engagement initiatives during a period of growth for the company. Prior to joining Karyopharm, Ms. Wood served as Vice President, Head of Human Resources for Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc., where she supported the company through a time of significant transformation, including uniting the company at a new corporate headquarters and the FDA approval and launch of the company’s first commercial product, EXONDYS 51. In her role, Ms. Wood helped scale the organization with the hiring of several top-level executives and the development and management of their teams. Earlier, Ms. Wood was Senior Vice President of Global Leadership Development at Genzyme Corporation. Ms. Wood served on the Board of Directors of Write Boston and the National Initiative for Children’s Healthcare Quality and as a Business Advisory Council Member for the Simmons School of Management. She holds her B.A. in Special Education and Child Study from Saint Joseph College, her master’s degree in Educational Media and Technology from Boston University, and also completed the Greater Boston Executive Development Program at the Sloan School of Management at MIT.
About Stoke Therapeutics
Stoke Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: STOK), is a biotechnology company pioneering a new way to treat the underlying causes of severe genetic diseases by precisely upregulating protein expression to restore target proteins to near normal levels. Stoke aims to develop the first precision medicine platform to target the underlying cause of a broad spectrum of genetic diseases in which the patient has one healthy copy of a gene and one mutated copy that fails to produce a protein essential to health. These diseases, in which loss of approximately 50% of normal protein expression causes disease, are called autosomal dominant haploinsufficiencies. The company’s lead investigational new medicine is STK-001, a proprietary antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) that has the potential to be the first disease-modifying therapy to address the genetic cause of Dravet syndrome, a severe and progressive genetic epilepsy. Stoke is headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts with offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For more information, visit https://www.stoketherapeutics.com/ or follow the company on Twitter at @StokeTx.
