About
Who We Are
La Jolla Healthcare Leaders is a thought leadership and corporate access platform that brings leading life science investors, innovators, and their industry partners together in San Diego to advance the understanding and treatment of disease.
What Make Us Different?
Our Community
San Diego’s La Jolla life science community has one of the densest collections of world-leading universities, research institutes, biotech, and pharma companies in the world.
As a life science hub, La Jolla is highly regarded for its breakthrough science, early product development, and collaborative spirit. At La Jolla Healthcare Leaders, we leverage these attributes.
Our Approach
Our approach is informed by of years sovereign wealth fund capital markets advisory; small molecule drug discovery and development; and specialty pharma corporate finance.
Our Deliverable
We call on our experience and relationships to convene high caliber one-on-one and group meetings that provide differentiated opportunities for life science stakeholders to exchange ideas; access novel science and technology; and identify compelling opportunities to collaborate.
Brian Connelly
Founder of La Jolla Healthcare Leaders
Experience: Multi-functional start-up through late-stage specialty pharma operating experience, Institutional capital markets advisory, and Investment banking.
Background: Brian is a Lehman Brothers and Smith Barney NYC trained capital markets specialist with 20 years of cross-functional small molecule drug development operating, governance, and advisory experience.
He was recruited into the industry by San Diego drug finder and then CEO of Avanir Pharmaceuticals, Jerry Yakatan, PhD. Together, they worked to quintuple AVNR’s stock price and transition its shareholder base to leading institutional investors, including Orbimed, MPM, Morgan Stanley, Franklin Funds, JP Morgan, T. Rowe Price, and Perceptive Advisors. Following Avanir, Brian went on to work with Jerry at Cobalis Corp.(CLSC) and Yagadol Ventures. For 13 years, Brian was the lead independent member of the board of Irisys, Inc., the San Diego CDMO that Jerry started and majority owned, through its sale to a public CDMO in 2021.
Bullish on San Diego: Brian formed La Jolla Healthcare Leaders to showcase San Diego’s world-leading life science innovation community and to offer differentiated opportunities for life science stakeholders to exchange ideas; evaluate emerging science and technology; and build relationships that advance the understanding and treatment of disease.
