🧬Unconventional Career Moves in Biotech: Finding a Path to Leadership | Caitlyn Krebs (Part 1/4)
April 13, 2026
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Caitlyn Krebs, co-founder and CEO of Nalu Bio, traces her journey from tagging endangered sea turtles on the Big Island of Hawaii to leading an AI-powered company designing novel cannabinoid-inspired small molecules for pain, inflammation, endometriosis, and metabolic disease. She reflects on being humbled at Brown University, where she fell in love with data analysis while studying leptin and early obesity science, then recounts jumping into the Bay Area’s dot-com boom as the third employee at a startup before, at just 27, taking the helm of BayBio and managing a 26-person board of biotech leaders—along the way crossing paths with a 20-year-old Stanford dropout named Elizabeth Holmes.
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“There are many different ways to get into leadership roles in biotech — there is not one door.”
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Caitlyn Krebs, co-founder and CEO of Nalu Bio, traces her journey from tagging endangered sea turtles on the Big Island of Hawaii to leading an AI-powered company designing novel cannabinoid-inspired small molecules for pain, inflammation, endometriosis, and metabolic disease. She reflects on being humbled at Brown University, where she fell in love with data analysis while studying leptin and early obesity science, then recounts jumping into the Bay Area’s dot-com boom as the third employee at a startup before, at just 27, taking the helm of BayBio and managing a 26-person board of biotech leaders—along the way crossing paths with a 20-year-old Stanford dropout named Elizabeth Holmes.
Key topics covered:
- Growing Up in Hawaii: Tagging endangered sea turtles and discovering a lifelong passion for science
- Brown University & Early Humility: Getting humbled at an Ivy, doubling down on orgo, and falling in love with data
- From .com to Biotech: Jumping into a dot-com startup and learning entrepreneurship the hard way
- Running BayBio at 27: Leading a biotech trade group and a 26-person board long before most peers managed a team
- Board Management Lessons: Keeping board meetings focused, aligning motivations, and leveling up with modern tools like Zeck
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Find our guest, Caitlyn Krebs at these links:
Website: https://www.nalubio.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee
Learn more about Excedr:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/
Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, Owned by Excedr:
Website: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:
Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle Conservation: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/green-turtle
The Endocannabinoid System Explained: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5576607/
Endometriosis: A Chronically Underserved Condition: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/endometriosis
Organic chemistry explained: https://www.britannica.com/science/organic-chemistry
The Dot-Com Boom and Its Legacy on Silicon Valley: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dotcom-bubble.asp
AI-Powered Drug Discovery in Biotech: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-023-01693-z
Companies, Universities, & People mentioned:
Brown University: https://www.brown.edu/
Zeck: https://www.zeck.app/
John C. Martin: https://www.gilead.com/news/news-details/2021/gilead-sciences-comments-on-the-passing-of-john-c-martin-phd
Elizabeth Holmes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-holmes-bb7326238
Edward Norton: https://fortune.com/2024/04/29/zeck-cofounded-by-edward-norton-raises-7-million-board-meetings-software/
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
05:02 Growing Up on the Big Island of Hawaii
06:37 Tagging Endangered Hawaiian Green Sea Turtles
08:01 Choosing Brown University Over the West Coast
10:26 Culture Shock: From Hawaii to Providence
14:01 Undergraduate Lab Experience and Falling in Love with Data
17:09 Moving to San Francisco During the Dot-Com Boom
18:40 Joining Zedo as a Third Employee and Learning Entrepreneurship
21:46 Managing Engineers for the First Time
24:14 Transitioning Into the Biotech World via BayBio
26:18 Becoming President of BayBio at 27
28:38 Key Lessons and Pitfalls in Board Management
31:59 Using Zeck to Streamline Board Meetings
33:52 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.