Thea Norman

Thea Norman created and leads the Integrated Development team’s Design, Analyze, Communicate (DAC) program, which works to address the significant problem of uninformative clinical research that does not help improve or save lives. DAC provides advisory services to foundation grantees so they can design and carry out more informative studies, and its open-source tools and resources are available to the global health research community at large. DAC began with a focus on clinical trials but has expanded since its launch in 2020 to cover many other types of studies, including implementation research reviews, reviews to accelerate alignment with policy makers and reviews to facilitate evidence translation for completed reviews.

Before joining the foundation in 2016, Thea served as the director of strategic development at Sage Bionetworks, an open science–focused biomedical institute where she ran the crowdsourced big data DREAM Challenges and led business development for Sage’s innovative mobile health research studies.

Earlier, Thea spent 12 years working at startup biotechnology companies in both scientific and business development leadership roles. During that time, she co-invented and completed the first chemical synthesis of Linaclotide, a multibillion-dollar, first-in-class biologic gastrointestinal drug for irritable bowel syndrome.

Thea has a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley.