Barbara Dalton has been running Pfizer Ventures, the US-listed drugs company Pfizer’s corporate venturing arm, since she joined in 2007 as vice-president.
Dalton’s team at the $600m unit puts out about $50m a year in cheque sizes of up to $10m per round and is both active and successful. She has managed more than 30 fund investments and 80 diverse company investments in the US and Europe and has had direct investing responsibility for biotechnology therapeutic and platform companies, as well as healthcare IT and service businesses.
In 2022, Pfizer Ventures has backed the $64m series B round for pharmaceutical company Arkuda Therapeutics, as well as the $24m series A round for TRex Bio, a biotech company involved in cancer research. The unit was also involved in the $80m venture round for Reflexion Medical, a developer of biologically-guided radiotherapy systems for patients with cancer.
Dalton’s experience in the pharmaceutical industry stretches back a quarter of a century to when she started as president of UK-based pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)’s corporate venturing unit, SR One, in 1993.
After formally leaving SR One in 2003, Dalton joined EuclidSR Partners, a $260m venture firm set up in 2000 and backed by GSK, before moving to Pfizer four years later. She received the Global Corporate Venturing Lifetime Achievement award in January 2019
Dalton has a PhD in microbiology and immunology from Medical College of Pennsylvania – now the Drexel University College of Medicine – and a bachelor’s degree from Penn State.
