Life sciences portfolio manager tapped for VC fund

A new director has been named for the state's multimillion dollar venture capital fund.

After four years as a principal, Elizabeth Good has been promoted to managing director of the state Department of Business and Economic Development Maryland Venture Fund, a 10-year-old fund that makes equity investments in emerging high-tech and biotech companies in Maryland.

The former life sciences portfolio manager will assume her position as the head of one of the state's most effective funding vehicles at the beginning of October.

The fund is very successful as it is and we are going to try and continue to grow it, provide more funding and grow the budget, said Good.

In her new role, Good, with a three-person staff, will oversee all equity financing activities of the fund, which, this year, is working with a $7.5 million budget.

She will manage a portfolio of about 100 active technology and biotech companies and develop a regional and international strategy for the state, which recently launched an aggressive international focus with trips to biotechnology centers such as Singapore.

Good takes the reins of a state funding engine known in economic development circles for its effectiveness, which led to a budget increase this year of $3.25 million.

The U.S. Department of Commerce, for example, awarded the Maryland Venture Fund the National Excellence in Innovation in Economic Development Award in June.

Also this summer, the fund ranked second in Entrepreneur Magazine's survey of the top 100 venture capital firms investing in startup and early-stage companies.

The 12 deals it brokered last year represented about $5.6 million invested in 30 companies, half of them early-stage ventures.

All told, the fund has poured about $35 million into Maryland companies in the last decade for a return of more than $50 million. It made early investments in such successes as Advertising.com, the Baltimore-based company that recently agreed to sell itself to Time Warner Inc.'s American Online Internet unit for $435 million.

Good, who has an undergraduate degree in biomedical and electrical engineering and a master's degree in bioengineering, as well as product development experience in the private sector, figures her promotion underscores the state's emphasis on growing its already strong biotechnology sector.

Since 2000, she has worked as a principal with the fund, combing through and evaluating potential life sciences companies, brokering investment deals and managing the life sciences portfolio.

Ann Quinn, the fund's previous managing director, will leave DBED at the end of the month to become director of strategy services of investment banking firm Chessiecap Inc. in Bethesda.

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