Shahram founded Civilization Ventures to help other founders succeed after spending more than a decade starting, running and investing in life sciences companies.
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Shahram is fortunate to have more then a dozen exits under his belt as a life sciences founder and investor, including Rewrite (acq. by Intellia), Rocket (listed on Nasdaq), SingularBio (acq. by Invitae), Lemonaid (acq. by 23andme), Counsyl (acq. by Myriad), and Avantome (acq. by Illumina), among many others.

Shahram was the founding CEO of Inspirna (originally named Rgenix), a biotech startup with two first-in-class clinical-stage therapeutics for cancer. He was also founding CFO and VP of Corporate Development at NextBio, a genomics software pioneer acquired by Illumina.

Shahram is passionate about keeping people and our planet healthy and thriving. Born in Iran, he came to the US as a child after his family escaped and was raised in Portland, Oregon. He went on to graduate from Pomona College with a degree in economics (with plenty of science, math and language courses thrown in), and obtained a JD from Harvard. Shahram loves spending time with his family in nature.

Sonia is an investment partner at Civilization Ventures, where she leverages her passion for innovation and multidisciplinary background in basic and translational research to spearhead the firm's scientific due diligence and run its Fellowship program.

Sonia earned her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California as an endowed fellow where she specialized in developing single cell diagnostic tools for precision oncology by integrating multiplexed molecular profiles and machine learning. During her time at USC, she successfully managed multiple projects across seven clinical trials, collaborating closely with clinical teams and key opinion leaders. Her work led to the invention of a patented precision medicine liquid biopsy test for early cancer detection and publications in Nature Breast Cancer and Blood. Sonia also has hands-on expertise in the development of clinical stage cancer immunotherapies.

As part of Civilization, Sonia is excited to play a key role in shaping the future of the biotech ecosystem by nurturing groundbreaking ideas and supporting the growth of its cutting-edge portfolio companies. While completing her PhD, Sonia was a Vice President of Partnerships at Nucleate and Vice President of Biotech Connection Los Angeles where she helped other PhDs enter the world of entrepreneurship.

Angelica is an Operating Partner at Civilization Ventures, where she applies deep expertise across artificial intelligence and therapeutic development to help guide scientific strategy across the portfolio.

Previously, Angelica served as Head of Platform at Savanna Therapeutics, where she helped advance the company’s mission to reprogram the brain’s immune system. Prior to Savanna, she worked at Sutter Hill Ventures, focusing on early company formation, and at Nurix Therapeutics, where she served as Associate Director of Machine Learning and applied computational approaches to drug discovery.

Angelica holds a PhD in Biophysics from Stanford University and a BS in Chemistry from UCLA. Drawing on her interdisciplinary background spanning AI, biology, and company building, she partners closely with founders to translate cutting-edge science into scalable therapeutic platforms.

Sarah has recently graduated from Stanford with a PhD in Chemistry and is an Associate at Civilization Ventures, where she conducts scientific diligence and helps with CV’s campus lecture series.

Sarah graduated from Pomona Collage with a degree in Chemistry. After graduation, she worked in Ireland as a Research Chemist for Acorn Water before returning back to the US to start her PhD studies. During her graduate work she focused on developing therapies for regenerating human tissues and building tissue engineered models for understanding disease progression.

Prior to joining Civilization Ventures, she worked in Genentech and Pear VC and served as the President of the Stanford Biotech Group.

Matt is the CFO of Civilization Ventures where he leads the finance and accounting functions. Prior to joining Civilization Ventures, Matt had an extensive career in client service focused primarily on alternative investments.

Matt began working in alternatives after successfully completing the level 2 CFA exam where he audited hedge funds with a global public accounting firm. After that, he joined a premier fund administrator in their San Francisco headquarters where he focused primarily on serving venture capital clients. Matt is the founder of fund administrator Vector AIS where he helped build an industry-leading team.

Matt has a business degree from Western University and holds a CPA designation. In his spare time, Matt likes to snowboard, mountain bike, travel, cook, read books and seek adventures.