Poornima Kumar is a molecular biologist by profession. She has worked in the Biotech industry in the Bay Area in pharmaceutical research and in the clinical trials industry for the last 23 years. She started her career as a Research scientist in the mid 1980s in Genelabs, a biotech startup company which was developing innovative drugs for HIV/AIDS. The last fifteen years of her career was in the clinical trials industry where she helped manage Phase 1, Phase II and Phase III studies globally for Pharmaceutical and Medical device companies. Currently, she lives in Mumbai and is the Managing Director of HemexDx, the Indian subsidiary of Hemex Health which manufactures low cost, accurate diagnostic devices for Malaria, Sickle Cell Disease,Thalassemia and Covid-19. Poornima served on the Board of the El Camino Hospital Foundation. She was also a charter member of EPPIC Global, which is an organisation for pharmaceutical professionals in the Bay Area.