Sheila Mikhail

Sheila Mikhail, founder and managing member of Life Sciences Law (LSL) has almost twenty-five years of experience in corporate and securities law and management consulting. Under her leadership, LSL has represented a wide range of venture backed and publicly traded pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies. She has participated in numerous public offerings and facilitated venture capital investments, mergers, acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, asset purchases, technology transfer and private placements of securities. To date she has completed more than 3000 agreements in the areas of licensing, development, evaluation, research, clinical trials, technology transfer and intellectual property.

Prior to attending Law School, Sheila worked as a consultant for Arthur Andersen, LLP in Chicago, where she specialized in mergers, acquisitions and cross-border transactions. She also worked for AT Kearney where she advised emerging companies on the commercialization of new technologies and Fortune 100 companies on operational strategies to improve profitability. Before establishing LSL, Sheila was Law Clerk to the Honorable Martha Craig Daughtrey, 6th Circuit, US Court of Appeals. She also practiced law with Ropes & Gray, LLP in Boston and Sullivan & Cromwell, LLP in New York.

Sheila understands the legal and business needs of entrepreneurs. As former CEO and co-founder of Asklepios BioPharmaceutical Inc., she raised $8.5 million and brought the company's leading therapeutic into a successfully completed Phase I clinical trial. As the former CEO of NanoCor Therapeutics, Inc., she guided the company from its start-up stages to raising $7.5 million from Medtronic, Inc. She also co-founded ZumaTek, Inc. as a spin-out from Duke University, and InnerOptic Technologies, Inc., a spin-out from UNC. As founder and managing member of Funny Girl Ventures, LLC, she has invested in early stage companies developing therapeutics and medical devices to address orphan drug indications and diseases primarily affecting women and children.

Sheila's interests extend beyond the legal community. Along with her daughter Megan, she co-founded FISH (Fostering Interest in Science and Healthcare), a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing the interest of minority high school students in pursuing careers in science and healthcare. Her commitment to higher education is also furthered through the Mikhail Family Scholarship at Arizona State University which enables select Latina women to attend the university. Sheila has also participated as an adviser in the Launching the Company program at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which assists professors and university researchers in spinning out their technologies into new companies and as an Executive-in-Residence in the TEC Program at NC State University, which develops commercialization strategies for technologies developed at NC State University and the RTP community.

Sheila is an active member and part of the organizing committee for Springboard: All Things Life Sciences Boot-Camp. She is also a member of the American Bar Association Corporate Governance Committee and the American Bar Association Venture Capital Subcommittee as well as a member of the Durham Local Advisory Board of BB&T. She has been an invited speaker for multiple conferences including various BIO conferences, the Management Biotech Conference at Northwestern University, the Industry Symposium at Ohio State University's Medical Center, and the MAGI Clinical Research Conferences in Miami and Boston.

Sheila was recently identified as one of the 50 most influential people in North Carolina by being named a 2009 NC Power Player, as well as being recognized by Business Leader Media as one of the top 100 attorneys in North Carolina. LSL has been recognized as one of the top 100 small businesses in North Carolina for the past two years.

Sheila received a BS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with highest honors; a finance M.B.A. from the University of Chicago, with honors; and a J.D. from Northwestern University, with honors. Sheila is admitted to the bars of Massachusetts, Arizona, New York and North Carolina.