Dorothy Margolskee

Dorothy joined Foresite Capital in 2012 and has overseen the development of Foresite Capital’s research and development evaluation group.

Dorothy has worked with Jim for more than 14 years, previously at Prospect Ventures as a Managing Director in charge of Research, and now at Foresite Capital. In this capacity, Dorothy built an early version of the Foresite Capital investment technical review process, rigorously analyzing biotechnology company portfolios on the basis of scientific validation, clinical efficacy and safety, manufacturing readiness and FDA regulatory risk.

Earlier, Dorothy had 15 years of drug development experience at Merck Research Labs, ultimately becoming a Senior Vice President with responsibility for a wide variety of clinical development programs and project planning. In particular, she was deeply involved in the design and execution of several vaccine programs, including Gardisil, RotaTeq, Varivax and Zostavax. Dorothy received an MRL Divisional Scientific Award in 1998 for developing one of Merck’s largest drugs, Singulair. In addition, she led the team that designed and implemented the advanced AIDS program during the development of Crixivan, one of the first HIV protease inhibitors that revolutionized the treatment of HIV infection.

Prior to joining Merck, Dorothy received an M.D. from Johns Hopkins Medical School where she was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha and a B.S. from Harvard University where she graduated summa cum laude. She is boarded in both Internal Medicine and Pulmonary, and completed her residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and fellowship training at UCSF.