Willie Quinn

Chief Executive Officer

Willie Quinn, Chief Executive Officer and board member, joined Bolt Biotherapeutics in 2020, bringing extensive experience in finance, operations, and business development leadership in the biopharma industry. Prior to joining Bolt, Mr. Quinn served as the chief financial officer and senior vice president of corporate development at Sunesis Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Viracta Therapeutics), where he led the company through multiple public financings and corporate collaborations. Before joining Sunesis, Mr. Quinn co-founded and was chief executive officer of Bullet Biotechnology, an immuno-oncology company developing therapeutic cancer vaccines discovered at Stanford University. Previously, Mr. Quinn was instrumental in establishing the infrastructure at Jazz Pharmaceuticals, where he was one of the first employees. During his eight years at Jazz, Mr. Quinn held positions of increasing responsibility in operations and business development as the company transformed from a privately held startup to a public and profitable specialty pharmaceutical company identifying, developing, and commercializing pharmaceutical products in neurology and psychiatry. Mr. Quinn’s final role with Jazz was leading corporate development, including product licensing, M&A, strategy, and investor relations. Prior to joining Jazz, Mr. Quinn was the chief financial officer and chief operating officer of Novation Biosciences, a biotechnology software company (acquired by Agilent Technologies). He served on the board of directors of A Foundation Building Strength, a nonprofit organization with a mission to find treatments for nemaline myopathy, for more than a decade, in addition to serving on the board of directors of Neuromast, a specialty pharmaceutical company.

Mr. Quinn earned his master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Stanford University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller scholar.

Grant Yonehiro

Chief Operating Officer

Grant Yonehiro, Chief Operating Officer, joined Bolt Biotherapeutics in 2016. Mr. Yonehiro has been responsible for business and corporate development, strategy, commercialization, and general management within biotechnology companies for over 25 years with significant transactional and operational responsibilities. He served as president and chief executive officer of Perseid Therapeutics from inception through acquisition by Astellas Pharma and stayed on post-acquisition as president of an Astellas operating site. He served as chief business officer for Berkeley Lights and Maxygen Inc., and held various senior management positions at GenVec, Inc., including vice president of commercial operations, vice president of product management and vice president of drug development. Prior to GenVec, he served in business development at Cell Genesys, Inc. in investment banking at Piper Jaffray and in the Technology Transfer Office at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Mr. Yonehiro graduated magna cum laude from the University of Minnesota with a Bachelor of Individualized Studies and received his MBA from the Haas School of Business at University of California, Berkeley.

Michael N. Alonso, Ph.D.

SVP, Research

Michael Alonso, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Research, is scientific co-founder at Bolt Biotherapeutics and co-inventor of Bolt’s proprietary ISAC platform. Dr. Alonso is passionate about translating scientific discoveries into innovative therapies that ensure cancer patients become cancer survivors. Dr. Alonso brings deep expertise in myeloid biology and drug discovery, with more than a decade of research and translational experience in immunology, neuroscience, and transplant biology. Prior to joining Bolt, Dr. Alonso served as the lead scientist at a Bay Area biotechnology start-up company and held leadership roles at Stanford University.

Dr. Alonso is a well-published scientist who earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University School of Medicine and his Certificate in Entrepreneurship from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Dr. Alonso graduated with distinction from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in molecular and cellular biology.

Dawn Colburn, PharmD, BCOP

SVP, Clinical Development

Dawn Colburn, Pharm.D., BCOP, Senior Vice President, Clinical Development, joined Bolt Biotherapeutics in 2023, bringing over two decades of experience in oncology clinical development. Before joining Bolt, Dr. Colburn served as Vice President of Clinical Science for Agenus and Arcus Biosciences, where she built and led the clinical science organization and the non-small cell lung cancer clinical development strategy at both organizations. Prior, Dr. Colburn spent over 15 years at Genentech, where she participated in the global filings for the Erivedge, Zelboraf, and Cotellic programs. She additionally took on the international development leadership for the Zelboraf/Cotellic programs in melanoma, as well as Tecentriq and Anti-TIGIT for hematologic malignancies.

Before working in clinical development, Dr. Colburn practiced as an Oncology Clinical Pharmacist for the leukemia service at MD Anderson Cancer Center. She is a board-certified oncology pharmacist. Dr. Colburn received her Pharm.D. from the University of California, San Francisco, and holds a B.S. in biochemistry from the University of California, Davis.

Nathan Ihle, Ph.D.

SVP, Pharmaceutical Operations

Nathan Ihle, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Pharmaceutical Operations, joined Bolt Biotherapeutics in 2019, bringing nearly 30 years of experience in pharmaceutical R&D, primarily in cancer drug development. Prior, he was the founder and principal at Ihle CMC Solutions. He also served as the vice president of manufacturing strategy at Immunomedics, Inc. (now Gilead Sciences), where he developed the supply strategy, supporting the global commercialization of the company’s first antibody-drug conjugate product, and was closely involved in the company’s regulatory submissions. Previously, Dr. Ihle worked for 16 years at Seattle Genetics, Inc. (now Seagen) as the vice president of CMC strategy and management, leading critical portions of the development of Adcetris (brentuximab vedotin) and other programs. At Seagen, Dr. Ihle was responsible for CMC aspects of development and regulatory strategies for all corporate programs, portfolio and project management, and alliance management.

Dr. Ihle completed his post-doctoral work as an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley after receiving his doctorate in organic chemistry from Stanford University.

Wesley Burwell

VP, Head of Human Resources

Wesley Burwell, Vice President, Head of Human Resources, brings more than 20 years of experience in building and driving human resources and employee development strategies for clinical-stage life science companies to Bolt Biotherapeutics. Prior to joining Bolt, Mr. Burwell was senior HR leader at Global Blood Therapeutics, where he supported the company’s exponential growth from early development through commercialization by leading talent acquisition and establishing internal programs to foster learning and development and employee engagement and retention. Over the course of his career, Mr. Burwell has held leadership roles in life science and technology companies, in addition to founding and building a successful recruiting and HR consulting practice. He has served on the board of directors for several non-profit organizations focused on healthcare and education. Mr. Burwell is passionate about building mission-driven organizations with strong cultures and diverse, inclusive workforces.

Mr. Burwell earned his MBA in international business from the University of San Francisco and B.A. in Human Resource Management from Golden Gate University.

Pam Howland

VP, Portfolio and Program Management

Pam Howland, Vice President, Portfolio and Program Management, joined Bolt Biotherapeutics in 2022 with more than 20 years of experience driving biotechnology programs through Investigational New Drug (IND) and clinical development, and regulatory approval and commercial launch program phases. Ms. Howland previously worked at Lyell Immunopharma, where she was responsible for the advancement of the first two lead cell therapy programs through IND and into clinical trials. Prior to Lyell, Ms. Howland served as Vice President, Project and Alliance Management at Pellepharm Inc., a BridgeBio company, where in addition to program management responsibilities for the company’s three clinical trials, she also served as Alliance Manager for research collaboration supporting eventual commercialization of the program. Prior to Pellepharm, Ms. Howland spent ten years at Sunesis Pharmaceuticals (now Viracta Therapeutics), where she managed the vosaroxin program from Phase 2 development through planning and conduct of the Phase 3 clinical program, including regulatory submission and defense. Previous responsibilities included program management roles at Jazz Pharmaceuticals and Cepheid.

Ms. Howland received her Master of Science degrees from Stanford University and the University of Santa Clara and her Bachelor of Science degree from Brown University.

Sarah Nemec

VP, Finance and Principal Accounting Officer

Sarah Nemec, Vice President, Finance and Principal Accounting Officer, joined Bolt Biotherapeutics in 2020, bringing more than 20 years as a senior finance leader in the life science industry to the company. At Bolt, she is responsible for all aspects of the company’s financial planning, accounting, and reporting. Ms. Nemec played a key role in Bolt’s initial public offering and spearheaded all activities necessary to establish the company’s financial management infrastructure, key reporting systems and processes. Prior to joining Bolt, she served as the vice president, principal accounting executive for BioElectron Technology Corp., where she led accounting and cash management for the company through the sale and transition of its assets to PTC Therapeutics. Previously, Ms. Nemec served as the director, financial reporting for JDA Software (now Blue Yonder) and associate director, SEC reporting for Affymetrix (acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific).

Ms. Nemec began her career as an auditor in the financial services and life science practice at Ernst & Young, LLP. Ms. Nemec is a certified public accountant and earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting from Ohio University.

Lu Xu, Ph.D.

VP, Development Sciences

Lu Xu, Ph.D., Vice President, Development Sciences, joined Bolt Biotherapeutics in 2022, bringing 20 years of experience in the development of a range of antibody-based therapeutics, primarily in the field of oncology. Over the course of her career, Dr. Xu has led or supported new drug development programs from early-stage research through post-marketing commitment, including 12 INDs and two BLAs. Before joining Bolt, Dr. Xu was co-founder and head of drug development at PRAV Biosciences. Prior, she was head of preclinical development and clinical pharmacology at 23andMe Therapeutics, where she oversaw preclinical safety assessment, pharmacokinetics, biomarker discovery, and bioanalytics. Dr. Xu also served as the head of clinical pharmacology and preclinical pharmacokinetics at OncoMed Pharmaceuticals (now Mereo BioPharma Group), supporting the planning and execution of multiple oncology programs from pre-IND stage through Phase 2 clinical studies. Before joining OncoMed, she held drug development positions of increasing responsibility at Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, and Novartis.

Dr. Xu earned a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering and an M.S. in regulatory science from the University of Southern California, and an M.S. in biochemistry from University of California, Riverside.

Tai Yu

VP, Regulatory Affairs

Tai Yu, Vice President, Regulatory Affairs, joined Bolt Biotherapeutics in 2022 with more than 18 years of clinical research and regulatory affairs experience across multiple therapeutic areas. Prior to joining Bolt, Mr. Yu worked at Amgen for more than 16 years with increasing regulatory strategy and oversight responsibilities for clinical programs and marketed products. Most recently, Mr. Yu served as the Global Regulatory Leader for bemarituzumab. During his tenure at Amgen, Mr. Yu was responsible for regulatory strategy for multiple T cell engager programs in early clinical development, participated in meetings with the FDA Oncologic Drug Advisory Committee, EMA Scientific Advisory Group, and other regulatory agencies. He also led global marketing application filings and approvals of BLINCYTO (blinatumomab) worldwide, including in the U.S., EU, Japan, China, and other countries. Prior to Amgen, Mr. Yu worked in clinical research at the City of Hope National Medical Center and The Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorder Institute. Mr. Yu holds a master’s degree in biological sciences, with an emphasis in molecular biology and a bachelor’s degree in microbiology and medical technology from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.