Donald Drakeman, J.D., Ph.D.

Donald L. Drakeman is a Partner with Advent Venture Partners, a life sciences venture capital firm based in London. Before joining Advent, he was an entrepreneur and executive who co-founded several biotechnology companies in the United States and Europe, including Medarex, Inc., and Genmab A/S. Under his leadership as CEO, Medarex created numerous therapeutic products for cancer and other life threatening diseases that are now in human clinical testing. Earlier in his career, he was an attorney with Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, and served as a Vice President of Essex Chemical Corporation, an NYSE-listed company.

An Ernst & Young Life Sciences Entrepreneur of the Year, he has chaired the Biotechnology Council of New Jersey and the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology, and he has been inducted into New Jersey s High Tech Hall of Fame. He has also served on the board of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO). He is currently a member of the Advisory Board for the Fox Chase Cancer Center Innovator Fund. He is also the Chairman of the Advisory Council of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, where he has co-chaired the Advisory Council for the Department of Religion. He is a trustee of Drew University, and he has previously served as a trustee of the University of Charleston. He received an A.B. magna cum laude from Dartmouth College, a J.D. from Columbia University, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and a Ph.D. in Religion from Princeton University. For the past 20 years, he has been a Lecturer in the Department of Politics at Princeton, and he has written several books and articles on constitutional law and history, the most recent of which has just been published by Cambridge University Press. He is also a member of the editorial board of MAbs, a peer-reviewed journal.