Linda Avey (

née A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth re ...

Bahnson) is an American biologist and entrepreneur. She is known for co-founding

23andMe 23andMe Holding Co. is a publicly held personal genomics and biotechnology company based in South San Francisco, California. It is best known for providing a direct-to-consumer genetic testing service in which customers provide a saliva sample t ...

, a consumer genetic data company.

Early life

Avey was born in 1960, in

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota people, Lakota and Dakota peo ...

, United States. She attended

Augustana University Augustana University is a private Lutheran university in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The university identifies 1860 as the year of its founding, the same as its Rock Island, Illinois Swedish-heritage sister school, Augustana College. It derives ...

, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in biology in 1982.

Early career

Avey began her scientific career in 1982 at

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

, Irvine as a staff research associate. In 1985 she moved into various sales and business development in the fields of biopharmaceutical and academic research based in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

, and

Washington, DC ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan ...

. She worked for Perlegen Sciences (2003-2005), coordinating the world's first genome-wide association studies, and for

Affymetrix Affymetrix is now Applied Biosystems, a brand of DNA microarray products sold by Thermo Fisher Scientific that originated with an American biotechnology research and development and manufacturing company of the same name. The Santa Clara, Califor ...

on the translational medicine team (2005-2006) with the goal of identifying genetic markers for diagnostic tests She also held positions at Spotfire,

Chemdex Chemdex.com, later known as Ventro Corporation and then NexPrise, Inc., was a B2B e-commerce company that first operated an online marketplace for products related to the life sciences industry such as laboratory chemicals, enzymes, and equipment, ...

Applied Biosystems Applied Biosystems is one of various brands under the Life Technologies brand of Thermo Fisher Scientific corporation. The brand is focused on integrated systems for genetic analysis, which include computerized machines and the consumables used w ...

, PerSeptive Biosystems, Molecular Dynamics, and ''Waters Corporation''.

23andMe and later career

In March 2006 Avey,

Anne Wojcicki Anne E. Wojcicki ( ; born July 28, 1973) is an American entrepreneur who co-founded and serves as CEO of the personal genomics company 23andMe. She founded the company in 2006 with Linda Avey and Paul Cusenza to provide the general public access t ...

, and Paul Cusenza founded

, the world's first consumer genetic data company. Avey left the company in 2009. Cusenza had left the company in 2007. In 2009, Avey launched the Brainstorm Research Foundation, focused on accelerating research on the prevention and alleviation of

Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegeneration, neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in short-term me ...

. In 2011, Avey co-founded Curious, Inc. with Heather Anne Halpert and Mitsu Hadeishi. The company was focused on building an online data aggregator of sensors, wearables, trackers, apps, social media, biometrics, and other personal data. In 2018 Avey and Aneil Mallavarapu, PhD, focused on building automation tools for the Indian clinical market through their start-up Precisely, Inc. Avey is an advisor to Verily Life Sciences and is on the Board of Fellows at Stanford Medical School.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Avey, Linda 21st-century American biologists American women company founders Living people 1960 births American technology company founders American women biologists Augustana University alumni Businesspeople from South Dakota Scientists from South Dakota 21st-century American women scientists