Mona Jhaveri
Mona is Director at Sound Affects, a 501c(3) non-profit. She launched Sound Affects to address “The Valley of Death,” a place where great ideas quietly go to die due to lack of critical early stage funding. This was the inevitable outcome for Mona’s biotechnology, when she founded her own start-up company, Foligo Therapeutics, Inc. to commercialize a potential ovarian cancer treatment. When Foligo closed its doors in 2010, Mona realized that breaking this funding bottleneck was a more critical priority than Foligo, and moved to devote herself to Sound Affects and its mission.
Sound Affects is devoted to transforming how the war on cancer is fought and financed. Sound Affects’ approach is to democratize how cancer solutions advance to market, a process that has been primarily controlled by institutional investors and pharmaceutical companies, often to the detriment of public health. Sound Affects established a crowdfunding portal that enables biotech innovators to raise badly need funds, while empowering people to rally around cancer solutions. To help raise awareness and funds, Sound Affects strategically partners with musical artists who seek to align their music with purpose.
[Programming descriptions are generated by participants and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of SXSW.]
Programming descriptions are generated by participants and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of SXSW.