On the morning after Athira Pharma’s IPO in September 2020, the ticker symbol was already streaming across financial news feeds. The company had just raised more than 200 million dollars in gross proceeds, adding to a total capital haul that would exceed 400 million dollars under Leen Kawas’ leadership. Inside the company, the mood mixed celebration with urgency. Clinical trials still needed every visit. Manufacturing plans still had deadlines. The science had not changed overnight. The context around it had.
For Kawas, those first 100 days as the CEO of a newly public biotech became a live laboratory in how to navigate public markets without losing sight of patients. The experience now informs how she leads EIT Pharma, advises portfolio founders as managing general partner at Propel Bio Partners, and contributes on boards such as Inherent Biosciences.
The IPO as a starting line
By the time Athira went public, the work behind it stretched back nearly a decade. Kawas had co-founded the company in 2011, then stepped into the CEO role in 2014. The team advanced small molecule therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases and built a late stage clinical pipeline in areas like Alzheimer’s and dementia. Athira’s IPO in 2020 placed her among a very small group of women founders in the United States who had led a biotech from inception to the public markets.
Crossing that threshold did not feel like a finish. In those first weeks, Kawas saw how easily an IPO can be mis-framed as a destination. Internally, she worked to reinforce that it was a financing event that provided tools to execute the original mission. The new capital allowed Athira to expand trials, invest in manufacturing readiness, and strengthen its team. The market listing created visibility with partners and researchers. The underlying objective stayed the same, which was to generate high quality data that could move therapies closer to patients.
One of her core takeaways from that period is that leaders need to set this tone quickly. If employees and investors start to treat the IPO as the story, attention drifts from the clinical and scientific milestones that actually create value.
Learning the cadence of a public company
The first 100 days also imposed a new rhythm. Earnings calls, quiet periods, SEC filings and analyst meetings appeared on the calendar alongside trial readouts and regulatory deadlines. Leen Kawas had to layer public company responsibilities onto the existing operating plan without letting them overwhelm the teams that were running the science.
She learned to treat communication as a discipline rather than an occasional task. Scientific progress needed to be translated into clear, consistent messages for different audiences. Investors cared about timelines, risk and capital needs. Collaborators focused on study design and data quality. Employees wanted to understand how market reactions might affect their day to day work.
In practice, that meant building internal routines: pre-briefs before major announcements, tight coordination between clinical leaders and investor relations, and early preparation for each reporting cycle. The lesson she carries forward is that founders should start practicing this type of structured communication well before going public. Doing that work early reduces the shock of the post-IPO environment.
Governance as an enabler of ambition
As a scientist and pharmacist by training, Kawas had always been close to the laboratory side of biotech. The move into the public markets pushed governance higher on her agenda. In the first few months, Athira strengthened its board, activated key committees and formalised decision pathways on capital allocation, portfolio prioritisation and risk oversight.
She came to see governance as more than compliance. Strong board structures, clear charters and well prepared committees gave her space to focus on strategy. When audit and compensation frameworks are robust, leadership can spend less time reacting to process issues and more time thinking about how to advance programs and partnerships.
At Propel Bio Partners, she now encourages founders to treat governance as a growth tool. Building an engaged board, refining reporting habits and clarifying who owns which decisions can accelerate a company’s ability to handle the complexity that comes with scale and, eventually, with public status.
Balancing volatility with a patient-centric anchor
Public markets move quickly. In the months after an IPO, share prices respond to sector sentiment, macroeconomic news and biotech-specific cycles, sometimes more than to any individual company event. Kawas experienced that volatility first hand.
Her response was to hold the organisation close to a patient-centric anchor. She has described how helpful it was to regularly bring the conversation back to why the company existed in the first place. Clinical trial participants and their families had entrusted Athira with their time and hope. That responsibility did not fluctuate with the stock chart.
In practical terms, this meant reinforcing long term priorities in internal meetings, making sure resource allocation decisions lined up with the most important clinical questions, and explaining to staff how near term market moves did or did not affect hiring, program plans or partnerships. The habit of returning to patients as the reference point is one she now applies across her roles in venture, company building and board service.
Using the experience to guide the next generation
Today, as CEO of EIT Pharma and managing general partner of Propel Bio Partners, Leen Kawas often finds herself on the other side of the table, helping founders think through when and how to access public capital. Her advice is shaped by those early months after Athira’s IPO.
She urges teams to build public company muscles early: disciplined financial reporting, regular practice explaining risk and timelines, and a culture that is comfortable with transparency. She encourages them to see the IPO as one milestone in a continuum of financing options, which include private rounds, strategic partnerships and follow on offerings. She also emphasises the importance of diversity in leadership, drawing on her own path as one of a small number of women who have led a biotech from concept, through late stage trials, into the public markets.
Most of all, she shares a perspective that grew clearer in that first 100 days. The structure of being public can be demanding, however it also provides a platform to pursue ambitious science at scale. When leaders enter that phase with a clear mission, strong governance and realistic expectations, the transition becomes less about surviving scrutiny and more about accelerating the work that mattered long before the bell rang.
Learn more about Leen Kawas in this interview: