Founder success is often framed around vision, grit, and innovation—but sustainable growth depends on how founders lead, make decisions, and build the foundation of a team and culture. Many founders start solo, wearing every hat and driving early momentum on their own. This webinar explores how founders evolve from doing the work themselves to leading the work—building the right systems, culture, and early teams to support growth. Speakers will share candid insights on early hires, leadership evolution, and practical lessons for founders preparing to scale their impact.

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Speaker Bios

Caralynn Collens, MD, CEO at Dimension Bio

Dr. Caralynn Nowinski Collens is the CEO and Co-Founder of Dimension Inx Corp., a biotechnology company developing regenerative therapeutics that restore lost function due to disease, trauma, or aging. She is passionate about building teams and organizations that harness technology to drive transformational change and improve the quality of people’s lives. Drawing from her experiences as an entrepreneur, executive, and investor, Caralynn brings a unique perspective to product and process innovation. She has a track record for translating vision into results that matter and delivering economic returns, and she has been recognized for deploying innovative business models and curating partnerships to tackle grand challenges. Caralynn has advised leaders from startups to Fortune 100 companies, universities, and all levels of government.

John Flavin, Founder & CEO at Portal Innovations, LLC

John is a proven leader with a track record of bringing valuable corporate, academic, and civic enterprises from concept to reality, including Advanced Life Sciences, Chicago Innovation Mentors, MATTER, and the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago. John is Co-Founder and Chairman of Pyxis Oncology, Executive Chairman of ClostraBio, and Board member at Grove Biopharma. Over the course of his career, John has successfully raised more than $345 million of private and philanthropic capital to fund the development of transformative organizations.

Jessica E. Samuels, EdD, Chief HR Officer at Evolve Career, Moderator

With a captivating personality and over 20 years of industry experience, Jessica empowers individuals to envision and achieve their fullest potential. Jessica’s mission is to evolve careers through her coaching by helping leaders increase empathy, competence, confidence, and nimbleness to make a greater impact.

Amanda Schalk, PhD, Co-Founder and COO of Enzyme by Design

Amanda earned her undergraduate degree in biochemistry on a full-ride scholarship from Eastern Michigan University. She then pursued her Master’s and PhD in molecular biology at the esteemed International Max Planck Research School and the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany. Following her doctoral work, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Dr. Lavie’s lab at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she engineered their superior L-asparaginases, leading to multiple first-author publications in peer-reviewed journals and patents. Currently, Amanda oversees Enzyme by Design's National Cancer Institute (NCI) grants and manages IND-enabling studies across various contract research organizations (CROs). Her leadership and contributions to translational science have been widely recognized—she was named a Chicago 40 Under 40 Translational Scientist by Halo, received the Early Career Innovator Award from AWIS Chicago, and was honored as one of Crain’s Chicago Business Notable Women in STEM.

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