BIO
Donna Chang was born in Daegu, South Korea, and moved to Mississauga, Ontario Canada, at the age of 1. Her family then moved to Bethesda, Maryland where she attended high school, but she returned to Canada to go to college at the University of Toronto. Upon graduation, Donna worked as a barista at a Starbucks and enrolled in a Master’s program at Johns Hopkins at the same time. Afterwards, she received an offer to work for the State of Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development as a part of the team that was responsible for recruiting life science companies. One day, she received a presentation on her desk given by a Korean company that highlighted the potential to isolate a person’s stem cells and replicate them. Donna immediately knew she wanted to get involved, and so she joined the company. After a few years with the Korean company, Donna and her two partners decided to start Hope Biosciences, a company dedicated to create stem cell solutions for a variety of diseases, where she holds the position of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the company.
Donna was declared an Asian-American hero in the Houston Chronicle after her company received 3 FDA approvals to conduct clinical trials for a potential therapeutic for the Sars-CoV-2 virus, the virus that causes the disease COVID-19. She is happily married with twins and continues to bring hope to the world through the work that she does.