Dr. Joanne Smith-Farrell is a mission-driven executive whose career has been dedicated to leading teams in conquering cancer, genetic diseases, and other life-limiting conditions. As President & CEO and Director of Be Biopharma since February 2021, she guides a diverse team of scientists, drug developers, clinicians, and manufacturing specialists in pioneering a new class of in vivo biologics—engineered B cell medicines—to deliver previously impossible solutions for patients with both rare and prevalent diseases.

Before joining Be Biopharma, Dr. Smith-Farrell served as Chief Operating Officer and Business Unit Head, Oncology at bluebird bio. In that role, she and her team built a robust oncology business, marked by breakthroughs such as Abecma—the first-in-class CAR-T therapy for multiple myeloma. She has also held executive positions at Merck, Pfizer, and Gene Logic, and began her career as a consultant with The Boston Consulting Group.

Dr. Smith-Farrell completed her post-doctoral research in biomedical engineering in Professor Robert Langer’s lab at the Harvard-MIT Division for Health Science and Technology, supported by the NIH National Service in Research Award Fellowship. She earned her Ph.D. in physics from The Catholic University of America—where she was recognized as a Herzfeld Scholar and Hubbard Fellow—and holds a B.S. in physics and mathematics from Vanderbilt University.

Susan Abu-Absi, Ph.D. is a strategic operations executive with over 20 years of experience in product development and supply in the biopharmaceutical industry. She joined Be Bio in March 2025 as Chief Operating Officer, responsible for driving all operational aspects of the business to unleash the power of engineered B cell medicines as therapeutics for patients with serious diseases.

Prior to Be Bio, Susan was Chief Technology Officer at 2seventy bio where she led the Technical Development, Supply & Quality organization. Her team provided deep execution capabilities in autologous cell therapy manufacturing resulting in the launch of Abecma and the translation of four novel therapies with complex layered technologies into the clinic.

Prior to 2seventy bio, Susan led technical development & operations at bluebird bio, a pioneer in ex vivo gene therapies, where she played an integral role in the approvals of Zynteglo and Skysona.

Prior to joining bluebird, Susan held leadership roles in the Global Product Development and Supply organization at Bristol Myers Squibb. She started her career in the Process Sciences organization at Bayer Healthcare.

Susan earned a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, where she conducted research in the laboratory of Professor Wei-Shou Hu as a National Science Foundation Fellow, and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering, Summa Cum Laude with Honors, from the University of Toledo.

Mr. Smith joined Be Biopharma from Affimed N.V., where he served as Chief Financial Officer from July 2020 to December 2023. During his time at Affimed, Mr. Smith led over $350 million of equity and debt financings for the company. He brings more than 18 years of experience in finance and investment banking within the life sciences and health care industries. His expertise lies in corporate and financial strategy, U.S. capital markets, business development and operations.

Before joining Affimed, Mr. Smith was the Chief Financial Officer at Rockwell Medical, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company specializing in the development and commercialization of anemia therapies. At Rockwell, Mr. Smith elevated his proven track record of financial execution, overseeing the financing of Rockwell’s flagship commercial drug launch and a revamp of the company’s internal controls.

Previously, Mr. Smith held several leadership positions at Pernix Therapeutics, including Senior Vice President, Chief Business Officer and Principal Financial Officer, overseeing Pernix’s financial, M&A and business development strategy. During his tenure at Pernix, Mr. Smith led the execution of several financing transactions and the acquisition of two commercial prescription drugs, aggregating over $500 million in total value.

Mr. Smith began his career in healthcare investment banking, serving most recently as a Director in the Healthcare Investment Banking Group at Cantor Fitzgerald in New York. During his nearly decade-long investment banking career, Mr. Smith specialized in spearheading growth strategies for life sciences and health care companies, resulting in an aggregate transaction value of more than $15 billion. Mr. Smith received a Bachelor of Arts in mathematical economics from Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.

The bulk of Dr. Morgan’s career was at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) where he led a series of laboratories in the field of cell and gene therapy. He was a member of the team that published the first approved human gene transfer experiment in 1990 (N. Engl. J. Med. 323:570, 1990). Early in his career, he focused on the first-in-human applications of gene therapy for genetic diseases such as severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) and research into gene therapy for hemophilia. He also led major research efforts into the application of gene therapy for infectious disease, specifically on HIV/AIDS, including one of the first clinical trials testing anti-HIV gene therapy in humans. He later switched focus to concentrate on cancer immunotherapy. Rick has extensively published on T-cell receptor (TCR) gene therapy and was the lead author on the first report where this technology was shown to mediate cancer regression in patients (Science 314:126, 2006).

In 2013, Rick made the switch from academia to industry to lead the immunotherapy efforts at bluebird bio where he was vice president of immunotherapy. Major accomplishments at bluebird include driving all pre-clinical activities for bluebird’s first oncology asset for the treatment of multiple myeloma, an anti-BCMA CAR. The successful clinical application of this technology was published in the New England Journal of Medicine (N Engl J Med. 2019 May 2;380(18):1726-1737), culminating in the approval of this approach as medicine (Abecma) in 2021. In 2018, Rick moved to Editas Medicine as senior vice president of immunogenetics where he focused on gene editing applications in immunotherapy. At Editas, he led the development of off-the-shelf cellular treatments for cancer immunotherapy using gene edited NK cells. Externally, Rick served as a member of the board of directors of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT), and he is a member of the scientific advisory board of the Keystone symposia.

Rick is an author of more than 200 scientific publications including papers with Nobel laureates EJ Corey, Harold Varmus and Andrew Fire. Rick holds a B.A. in biochemistry from Brandeis University and a Ph.D. in genetics from The Johns Hopkins University.

Rashmi Kshirsagar has relevant industrial experience in pharmaceutical Chemistry, Manufacturing and Controls (CMC) development based on more than 20 years of CMC development responsibilities in biologics, focused on proteins and cell therapy. Rashmi Kshirsagar joined Be Biopharma as Senior Vice President and will be part of the Operations Leadership Team. Rashmi will be responsible for leading and managing our technical teams. The focus areas for the teams are process, product and analytical development and innovation to advance the B Cell Platform as well as enabling Chemistry, Manufacturing and Controls (CMC) development for our portfolio candidates as they transition from Discovery and move through various phases of clinical development, preclinical to commercialization.

Previously, Rashmi was the VP for Technical Development and CMC Strategy at Rubius Therapeutics, where her responsibilities included leading teams within Rubius that focused on process, product and analytical development and innovation to advance the RED PLATFORM® as well as overseeing CMC strategy and project management for Rubius’ Red Cell Therapeutic™ product candidates that transition from the discovery phase through clinical development. Before that, she was Senior Director for Protein Development in Pharmaceutical Operations & Technology at Biogen. Her group was responsible for developing and supporting manufacturing processes to produce protein drug substance for internal and partnered early and late stage (preclinical to post BLA) biopharmaceutical programs in a compliant manner using industry leading technologies.

She joined Biogen with a PhD in Chemical Engineering from University of Minnesota where she worked with Professor Wei-Shou Hu and prior experience in Technical Development at Millennium Pharmaceuticals. Her graduate work involved application of genomic and proteomic approaches to mammalian process development.

Rashmi has been active for more than 25 years in the scientific community by presenting at conferences, publishing scientific papers and book chapters, planning conferences, conference sessions and workshops and participating in industrial forums and consortia. She has gone through various internal and external leadership development programs and is passionate about people development, organizational effectiveness and diversity and inclusion programs.