Lindee Goh, Principal
Places lived: Malaysia, Philippines, United States (Boston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco)
Education: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), post-graduate work as a Leukemia and Lymphoma Fellow working in neuroscience; doctorate in biology as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fellow at the Center for Cancer Research at MIT; California Institute of Technology (Caltech) BS (honors) in biology; member, Sigma Xi and Tau Beta Pi scientific and engineering honors societies
Experience: Senior project leader at Boston Consulting Group working with senior executives in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries, provider and payer spaces. Within biopharma, worked throughout the value chain from research and development to commercial, across primary and specialty care. Expertise in strategy and organizational effectiveness.
Focus: Bridging the gaps between public and private healthcare organizations, and among scientific, commercial, and public policy areas with the goal of improving healthcare systems for all.
Intellectual influences: Marie Curie, Florence Nightingale, Richard Feynman, and teachers and scientists throughout my career
Turning points: Leaving academia, but continuing to bring that love of science and openness to learning into our work. Having a family, which provides strength and purpose to create a future you believe in.
Lindee was born in Penang, Malaysia, but grew up in the Philippines, attending an international school with classmates from more than 50 countries. That initial international education grounded her fundamental view that perspectives come in all flavors and backgrounds: “It’s hard to argue that your viewpoint is the correct one when you have heard equally valid arguments from 30 other perspectives in a debate,” she says.
Lindee has always had a enthusiasm for science, fostered by her father, an engineer, and her mother, who worked in healthcare, as well as by teachers she’s encountered throughout her education and professional career. One of her influences is Marie Curie, the first woman to have won a Nobel prize and first to be honored with two Nobel prizes in chemistry and physics. “She was a scientist, mother, and a woman who made a difference in a field despite all odds against her.”
At Caltech and at MIT, Lindee’s love of science continued. That interest in science and openness to learning is a common thread in all the work she has continued since. In her work at Tapestry, Lindee particularly enjoys the challenge of applying her experience in both the scientific and corporate worlds to real problems in development of therapies and bridging the R&D, clinical, regulatory, reimbursement, and patient advocacy worlds.
Lindee considers the multi-stakeholder drug development pilots she is co-leading effective forums to restructure and change the status quo. “The pilots are a means to educate all; to cross barriers and think about how things can be improved and reconceived if you think holistically, rather than sequentially.” Lindee has played a key role in developing Tapestry’s healthcare practice, which she sees as playing a vital role in the world.
“What troubles me most is the lack of scientific knowledge and understanding that goes into decision-making and the undervaluation of knowledge in general. We need to marry scientific depth with the ability to communicate ideas to the broader public and decision-makers,” she says. “I believe that we, as humans, have an amazing ability to solve the most complex issues if we put enough mind-power and will behind our efforts. If I look at how biology as a field has evolved, it is amazing and yet there is so much more we can explore and understand – such as how the human mind works. If we can value the contributions of all parties, the intellectuals and the process people, across gender and background, what tremendous things we can accomplish. I am at heart a scientist, an idealist, an idea generator, and an educator.”
“I’m also an optimist,” Lindee adds. “When you have children, you must have hope. With their innate sense of curiosity and wonder, children are true natural scientists. They know no boundaries and believe everything is possible.”
Outside of adventures in chasing her kids around, Lindee has enjoyed playing competitively in Ultimate Frisbee, running, scuba diving, choral singing in New York’s Carnegie Hall, glass blowing, and holds a black belt in aikido.
She lives in Somerville, MA with her husband and two sons.
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