Editor's note: The Silicon Valley Business Journal is honoring 100 Women of Influence on May 16 for their impact on their professions and in their community. This is a profile of one of the women being recognized. Click here to read all of the profiles as they are published.
Dr. Phyllis I. Gardner has built a career around successfully navigating both academia and the business world. Her expertise includes pharmacology, drug delivery systems, and corporate investing and governance.
She joined Stanford in 1984, where she earned tenure. She’s also held roles there including senior associate dean for education and student affairs. She took a leave of absence from 1994 to 1998 to work at ALZA Corporation, then joined Essex Woodlands Health Ventures from 1999 until 2015 where she was an adjunct partner and then partner.
“All of a sudden, I was exposed to the corporate world, and I loved it,” Gardner said, estimating that she’s served on the boards of at least five private and eight public companies by this point. “I want to be of service to people. I want honesty, integrity.”
Her emphasis on those values has put her in the news recently. Early on, she raised a red flag about the viability of then-Stanford student Elizabeth Holmes’ ideas for medical technology. Holmes ignored Gardner’s guidance and founded blood-testing company Theranos, which ultimately failed. Gardner has been cited in numerous news articles about the company and in the HBO documentary "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley.”
First job: “My first job was in high school as a veterinary assistant at Oklahoma State University.”
Growing up, you wanted to be: “My goal had been to be a lawyer (criminal defense morphing into Supreme Court Judge!) but my father put the kibosh on, saying I would ‘end up writing wills in a small town.’ (Clearly, he had a dim view of the scope of lawyer's jobs.)”
Corporate boards: She serves on the board of directors of Revance Therapeutics and CohBar, as well as the Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows and Advisory Council on Education. She is also a member of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.
See who made the 2019 class of Women of Influence by clicking through the slideshow.