Tania Fernandez

DreamCatcher Ventures

Tania Fernandez, Ph.D. is the founder and Managing Partner of DreamCatcher Ventures, a San Francisco, CA based advisory firm supporting biotech, life sciences and healthcare companies in building, scaling, and commercializing innovation. With over twenty years of experience as a scientist, venture capitalist and entrepreneur, she brings deep domain expertise and a global perspective having worked across the US, India, Poland, Europe, Israel, and Scandinavia. Dr Fernandez has served on the boards of multiple start-ups and currently sits on the Board of the United States-India Science and Technology Endowment Fund. She has a wealth of experience in public-private partnerships. She serves as a team leader for the $1.5B RADx (Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics) initiative, a public-private partnership that accelerated the development and deployment of Covid-19 diagnostics during the pandemic. She was also instrumental in helping raise and manage Biomed, a seed stage public-private venture fund in Poland, serving as a Managing Partner and Chair of the Investment Committee. In addition, she advises accelerators and incubators as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence where she bridges science and business to guide entrepreneurs through rigorous scientific and market analysis, corporate strategy, sustainable business model design and investor readiness with a strong focus on value creation. She also works with funders to identify and due diligence promising investable opportunities. Prior to this she served as a Director of the Venture Capital Group at a $1.5B healthcare fund in San Francisco sourcing and managing investments in both private and public biotech companies. Dr. Fernandez earned her doctorate at the Cancer Research Institute in India, as a recipient of the prestigious Indo-US scholarship from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Her research work won her the Young Scientist Award and the most outstanding doctoral thesis. She also completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Cancer Institute, NIH, USA. Dr Fernandez earned her doctorate at the Cancer Research Institute, India, having been awarded the Indo-US scholarship from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and her post-doctorate at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, USA.