Lisa McDonald

Bio

Lisa McDonald MD, MSTC is the Director of Healthcare for the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) at The University of Texas at Austin where she drives support for early-stage companies, including pipeline management and economic development collaborations beyond the university community. ATI’s Healthcare incubator focuses on meeting the growing need for innovative healthcare products and services with the goal of transforming the healthcare industry.

In March of 2020, Dr. McDonald led the formation of the Texas Global Health Security Innovation Consortium (TEXGHS). TEXGHS is a public-private partnership organized by ATI that is built to serve as a convening and coordinating organization to strengthen and address limitations in our community’s ability to respond to global health security emergencies.

Dr. McDonald co-founded Endura Ventures in 2010, a global health strategic consultancy focused on delivering high impact programs internationally and through public-private partnerships. She launched the PandemicTech virtual incubator in 2016 as a program within Endura Ventures, which was then spun out as a standalone company in 2019. PandemicTech is a virtual technology incubator that connects the global health security and technology communities to support innovative local solutions to pandemic infectious disease challenges. The virtual incubator brings private funding and entrepreneurship models to an issue typically within the domain of governments and philanthropies. It focuses on identifying promising innovators in low and middle-income countries and surrounding them with resources from the international technology community to develop and scale their unique approaches to solving local challenges.

Since 2016, PandemicTech has supported dozens of innovators through equity investment (a Nigerian infectious disease microinsurance startup, a Mexico-based at-home COVID-19 diagnostics company), grant funding (a diagnostics design project in Ethiopia, an Egyptian antimicrobial research program, and a Nigerian health technology hackathon), and in-kind support from the PandemicTech network (collaboration with the World Health Organization to launch the inaugural WHO Africa Innovation Challenge). PandemicTech provided seed funding for TEXGHS, is a sponsor of the Global Health Security Network, and is a member of WHO's Strategic Partnerships Portal for International Health Regulations.

Dr. McDonald has been a Faculty Lecturer for the Inventor’s Program in the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. She supports the regional entrepreneurial community as a mentor, judge, speaker and advisory board member for multiple organizations, including the Minority Aids Research Committee, Nursing Innovation Hub, Mass Challenge Texas, 3 Day Startup, Techstars Impact, Blackstone Launchpad, Accelerate South, Austin Community College Bioscience Incubator, SXSW, and the Rice Alliance for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Dr. McDonald holds a MS Technology Commercialization from the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin, a MD from the Yale University School of Medicine, and a BS in Chemistry from The University of Texas at Austin, where she graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.