The 2018 Emerging Young Leaders show extraordinary promise in shaping the future of medicine. The Leaders are students, scientists, researchers, and people in business who carry out the mission of the Cura Foundation in their chosen field. Each of the Emerging Young Leaders has created change in the world around them, not letting age limit their impact.
Alexandra Hariri
We are proud to honor Alex Hariri as the 2018 Emerging Young Leader for her work in cellular sciences and regenerative medicine. Alex currently serves as a project leader and associate director of business development at LifebankUSA, a leader in placental and cord blood stem cell banking. Alex leads the creation of novel programs, which provide access to donor-directed cell banking services for families battling a number of diseases currently treatable by cell therapy or under clinical investigation such as multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s disease. While interning under Dr. Xiaokui Zhang at Celgene, she was part of the team which discovered placental natural killer cells, which have great promise to effectively treat cancers and viral infections.
Alex graduated from Princeton University with a degree in evolutionary biology focused on epidemiology. Alex is especially interested in applying her knowledge on a global scale and carried out field work on infectious disease outbreaks in the Sarawak Province of Malaysia. Following her graduation from Princeton, Alex worked as an editorial researcher at Scientific American where she helped create the Worldview Edition as well as several issues devoted to major health care topics. Alex then traveled to England where she served as a research associate at the Oxford University incubator company, Oxstem. Following her return to the United States, Alex entered the Master’s Program in biotechnology at Georgetown University where she graduated at the top of her class.
Deeply interested in the societal, ethical and moral implications of science and technology, Alex has served on the Women’s Leadership Council of the Liberty Science Center, and the Glasser Brain Tumor Campaign at the Overlook Medical Center. Alex was also recognized as the youngest female licensed pilot in the history of the United States and is an American Red Cross Certified Lifeguard. Alex embodies the values of the Cura Foundation and carries the mission in all her endeavors. She is committed to spreading her knowledge around the world and inspire other millennials.