Facilitator

Having spent time as a human rights activist in Eastern Europe and Africa, Alyssa brings over a decade of experience in international philanthropy to Wright Collective. With a background in community organizing and the arts, Alyssa leads the collective with skill, creativity, and passion. As an accomplished facilitator, consultant, and coach, she builds new revenue streams, shifts cultural perspectives, and inspires people to believe that change is possible no matter what.

She has helped hundreds of both domestic and global social change organizations successfully launch major gifts programs, capital campaigns, and create sustainable funding models resulting in over $50,000,000 of resource flow. Everyone that has worked with Alyssa knows that she is a true partner. She answers late-night text messages, takes on difficult conversations with donors for clients, and makes jokes that will keep clients smiling through rejected proposals and rained-out fundraising events. Her experience and wit has also allowed her to become a sought-after speaker on philanthropy and fund development as well as a regular contributor to Forbes, Global Giving, and Network for Good. Alyssa is a powerful Millennial voice in the social change movement.

Director of Clinical Neuro-Oncology at Children's National Hospital, Medical Director at the Brain Tumor Institute, Executive Co-Chair of the Children's Brain Tumor Tissue Consortium, LBF Scientific Advisor

Brian R. Rood, M.D., is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics in the Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders at Children’s National Hospital whose primary clinical focus is pediatric neuro-oncology. Dr. Rood joined the faculty of Children’s National in 2002 after completing a fellowship in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology as well as a research fellowship in the molecular biology of brain tumors, both at Children’s National and Children’s National Research Institute.

Dr. Rood is the Director of Clinical Neuro-Oncology at Children’s and cares for brain tumor patients on the inpatient oncology ward and in the outpatient clinic. He is co-principal investigator with Roger Packer, M.D., of the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium clinical trial program at Children’s National and runs an active molecular biology lab in the Center for Cancer and Immunology Research. He also is investigating the proteome of medulloblastoma, the most common malignant brain tumor of childhood, in order to determine the differences between the four subgroups of the disease in an effort to identify therapeutic targets. He aims to further this work by identifying medulloblastoma specific proteins in the cerebrospinal fluid in order to discover biomarkers capable of providing insight into the biology of brain tumors and detecting recurrent disease. Dr. Rood also is working to identify microsatellite markers in a person’s DNA that predict the risk of developing different kinds of brain tumors.

Dr. Rood has two children. His favorite past times include designing and building furniture, sailing, reading, and playing the mandolin.

Anne Wintroub is the founder of Upside, a social impact consultancy specializing in program design and growth, investment and fundraising strategies and groundbreaking collaborations. She is an expert in corporate social responsibility, education and entertainment with extensive corporate, philanthropic and non-profit experience, and is an impassioned connector of people and ideas.

For the past decade, Anne led social innovation for the AT&T Foundation, specializing in strategy, philanthropy and program development in education, technology, media and the arts. Anne has developed programs with partners including Google, Warner Media (Warner Bros, HBO, CNN) and Khan Academy and has created countless learning and creative experiences for young people across the country. She’s a driver of scale and trusted advisor to social-impact startups and collective-impact programs in the for- and non-profit space. Her deep non-profit expertise was developed over ten years as a leader in public broadcasting and public libraries

Drawing from a vast network of foundations, corporations, NGOs and stakeholders, Anne has designed and launched many influential programs and campaigns. These include: a multi-million dollar education fund to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic; content-development labs for young women and youth of color developed in partnership with celebrity talent including Lena Waithe and Reese Witherspoon to diversify the entertainment sector; and the AT&T Aspire Accelerator, an industry-leading startup incubator that’s shaping the future of online learning.

Anne is a dedicated child advocate, and in 2012 founded The Augie Fund in partnership with UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital to provide free glasses and lenses to any Bay Area child that needs them. She is passionate about storytelling and the arts, and is a board member for 826 National and San Francisco Grants for the Arts. She is a graduate of the University of California, Davis and earned her Masters Degree from New York University Tisch School of the Arts. Anne is also a First Mover with the Aspen Institute and a frequent public speaker.

Physician/Scientist, Division of Oncology

Jessica Foster is an Instructor, Division of Oncology, Perelman School of Medicine, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, responsible for conducting research under the direction of Dr. Adam Resnick. Her research focuses on immunotherapy and RNA chimeric antigen receptor therapy for solid tumors.

Prior to joining CHOP in July of 2014, Jessica completed a residency program in Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and served as Chief Resident. She completed her fellowship in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Jessica earned a BA from Columbia University before completing an MD from The University of Virginia. She is committed to applying immunotherapy to cure the most difficult-to-treat cancers. She believes the immune system is the key to helping eradicate childhood cancer, and her research focuses on using the immune system to attack tumors in a novel way. Jessica’s ultimate goal is to translate the findings discovered at the research bench to clinical trials for patients, to cure childhood cancer for good.

Lab Director, Center for Data Driven Discovery in Biomedicine

Dr. Mateusz Koptyra is a Senior Scientist responsible for initiation, coordination and implementation of scientific projects around the Center’s research units. His team identifies the research demands at the clinical level and creates pipelines for projects to test the research proposals at a pre-clinical level, with a primary focus on quality data generation in genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic tumor profiling for the biomarker search. Mateusz is also responsible for exploration and validation of the platforms to be utilized for Center’s pipelines, and improvements of sample collection, handling and storage methods to empower the Children’s Brain Tumor Tissue Consortium pipeline. His research focuses on non-invasive diagnostics in pediatric brain tumors, biomarker search, cell-free DNA/RNA, and extra-cellular vesicles, including the development of non-invasive medulloblastoma tumor profiling using circulating in blood tumor material (cell-free DNA).

Prior to joining CHOP in September of 2011, Mateusz worked as a research assistant to explore diagnostic utilities for breast cancer at the Center of Oncology in Warsaw, Poland. Additionally, he worked as a research scholar at Temple University where he studied mechanisms for therapy resistance to small molecule inhibitors in chronic myeloid leukemia, before completing a post-doctoral fellowship at Thomas Jefferson University to explore the role of Stat5 transcription factors in prostate cancer models.

Mateusz earned an MS degree from Warsaw University and completed his PhD from the Medical University of Warsaw in Warsaw, Poland. He is committed to empowering non-invasive diagnostics for pediatric brain tumors. He aims to bring a small chunk of meaningful quality research data which will lead to improvement in clinic for any child in need.

Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Day One Biopharmaceuticals

Samuel Blackman, M.D., Ph.D. is our co-founder and has served as our Chief Medical Officer since November 2018. Prior to co-founding Day One, Dr. Blackman was Head of Clinical Development at Mavupharma, a drug discovery company focused on leveraging the immune system to treat cancer and infectious diseases, from September 2018 to July 2019. Prior to Mavupharma, he was Head of Clinical Development at Silverback Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing tissue-targeted therapeutics, from August 2016 to September 2018. Prior to Silverback, Dr. Blackman was a senior medical director at Juno Therapeutics, a biotechnology company focused on cancer treatments from June 2014 to August 2016, and before that he held roles of increasing responsibility at Seattle Genetics, Merck, and GlaxoSmithKline. He is a graduate of the pediatric hematology/oncology fellowship program at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Children’s Hospital Boston, and the pediatric residency program at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Dr. Blackman received his B.A. in Philosophy, his M.D. and Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Jeremy Bender, PhD, MB

Attending physician, Director of clinical research in the department of Neuro-Oncology at CHOP

Dr. Cassie Kline is the Director of Clinical Research for Neuro-Oncology within the Division of Oncology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, as well as Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Kline specializes in the care of children, adolescents, and young adults with brain and spinal cord tumors of all types. She has a Master’s of Advanced Studies in Clinical Research and focuses her career on early phase clinical trials and developmental therapeutics for pediatric brain tumor patients. Dr. Kline’s other research interests include predictors of neurocognitive outcomes in pediatric brain tumor survivors and personalized and immunotherapy-based approaches for the treatment of brain tumors. Additionally, Dr. Kline serves as the Director of Data Quality and Integration for PNOC, overseeing the consortium’s data collection processes and also integration across a variety of data platforms and research collaborations.