About Kendalle
Kendalle Burlin O’Connell leads the world’s oldest and largest biopharma membership organization with a clear conviction about where the future of the industry is decided: in the early-stage companies, founders, and scientists doing the hard work of turning discovery into medicine. As CEO and President of MassBio, she has built her tenure around supporting them through every challenge they face, from raising capital to navigating a complex federal landscape to competing on a global stage, because the breakthroughs patients are waiting for begin with them. Over more than 18 years with the organization, she has grown MassBio to 1,700+ members and reoriented its mission around advancing innovation and the people driving it.
To serve companies across every stage of growth, Kendalle has expanded MassBio’s innovation offerings far beyond traditional membership. She refocused Drive, the organization’s accelerator for breakthrough science, toward national leadership, resourcing emerging startups and founders wherever they operate. Since launching in 2022, Drive has supported 70 early-stage companies that have raised $137 million and created nearly 100 jobs, with dedicated cohorts now reaching techbio companies built on generative AI and large language models. She has grown Pharma Days and the MassBio Align Summit into essential gatherings for funders, biotechs, and strategic partners, and extended MassBio’s reach beyond Massachusetts to broaden the investors and resources available to early-stage ventures. To support the people behind the science, she has partnered with The Termeer Institute and others to build new communities and programs for first-time CEOs, scientific founders, and the executives-in-waiting preparing to lead the next generation of companies.
Creating opportunity has been central to Kendalle’s vision for the industry’s future. She was the driving force behind Bioversity, a nonprofit that creates new training pathways and employer connections for people traditionally left out of the life sciences. Bioversity now operates workforce training centers in Dorchester and Lowell and has graduated 135 students as of May 2026. More than 90 percent of its students are Black and/or Latino, and 80 percent have landed full-time jobs in the industry following graduation.
Under Kendalle’s leadership, MassBio has become one of the most influential voices in the policy debates shaping the industry, from Beacon Hill in Boston to Capitol Hill in Washington. Over the past 18 months in particular, she has elevated the organization’s presence in Washington, advocating to protect federal research funding through the NIH, to reauthorize and strengthen the SBIR program that early-stage companies depend on, and for an FDA that better understands the small biotechs developing the newest therapies for patients. She regularly convenes biotech CEOs to shape that advocacy and brings them face-to-face with the lawmakers who will decide it. She has also positioned MassBio at the center of the national conversation on maintaining American leadership in biopharma amid accelerating global competition, particularly from China.
Kendalle’s leadership has earned wide recognition, including a place on Boston Magazine’s 150 Most Influential Bostonians for four consecutive years and the Boston Business Journal’s 2025 Power 50: Movement Makers list. She serves as Chair of the Eastern New England Board of Directors for the American Cancer Society, Chair of Bioversity’s Board, a member of the Board of Advisors for Life Science Cares Boston, and an Advisory Committee member for Suffolk University Law School’s All Rise Program.
Kendalle graduated cum laude from Sacred Heart University with a B.A. in Economics and Political Science and earned her Juris Doctor from Suffolk University Law School. She lives in Haverhill, Massachusetts, with her husband and two children.