A Conversation with Bascom Ventures' Portfolio Company CEOs

John Pattison is the co-founder and CEO of Cultured Decadence, a Wisconsin-based cellular agriculture company using cell culture and tissue engineering to create seafood, specifically shellfish products, directly from cells. The company aims to produce a variety of products to help address the growing demand for nutritious, safe, and sustainable seafood worldwide. Previously he served as an Army officer with the 25th Infantry Division and worked in the US and China in various operations and consulting roles for financial, agricultural, and consumer goods clients. John received his BA in Economics from UW-Milwaukee and MBA from NYU-Stern. John serves on the Board of Directors of New Harvest, the leading non-profit research institute dedicated to advancing cell-cultured meat technologies.

Stephen Towe is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Leo Cancer Care. Having successfully driven the design of the Leo Cancer Care technology in Australia, Stephen took over the role of CEO in 2018. Since then, he has led the expansion of Leo across both the US and Europe. He has a successful track record of delivering the most innovative products in radiotherapy, having led development teams in the completion and release of the Elekta Unity MRI guided radiotherapy system. Stephen has built a career innovating and commercializing radiotherapy products in the United States, Australia, and across Europe. He thrives on challenging the norm and improving the quality of care.

Dr. Hanadie Yousef is a scientist, aging biology expert, and the co-founder and CEO of Juvena Therapeutics, a biopharma startup developing protein-based therapeutics to promote tissue regeneration and increase healthspan to prevent, reverse, and cure degenerative diseases. For over 18 years, she studied mechanisms that underly brain and muscle aging, including adult stem cell decline, inflammation, and fibrosis. She elucidated age-associated protein signaling changes systemically and locally in tissues that lead to loss of tissue homeostasis and the onset of degenerative diseases. Dr. Yousef’s discoveries led to several novel drug targets and methods for tissue rejuvenation, with numerous issued and pending patents and high-profile publications. Dr. Yousef’s key discoveries laid the foundation of Juvena Therapeutics’ venture-backed, drug discovery and preclinical development platform. Dr. Yousef earned her B.S. in Chemistry, summa cum laude from Carnegie Mellon University, a PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology from UC Berkeley as an NSF graduate research fellow, pursued a 5-year postdoctoral fellowship in Neurology at Stanford School of Medicine as an NIH fellow and SPARK scholar, and conducted R&D for Regeneron and Genentech.

Greg has been a Managing Partner with Alumni Ventures since 2017. He is the Founder of Bascom Ventures and runs Towerview Ventures and has made more than 100 investments as a member of Alumni Ventures. These investments include: American Gene Technologies, SHINE Medical, Mission Bio, Axiom Space, Matchwell, and many others. Prior to joining AV, Greg was a highly accomplished executive with experience in corporate leadership, business development, startups, M&A, strategic planning, and more. He spent much of his career growing businesses in the electrical products, packaging, and chemical industries. Greg has a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin (’86) and an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University (’91).