Cassie is a creative connector integrating people, science, and legal solutions to drive business growth. She is a scientist and a registered patent attorney with over a decade of experience in intellectual property, regulatory, licensing & corporate law, and IP due diligence. Cassie has global experience protecting IP and driving regulatory approvals in the areas of biotechnology and bioengineering from plants to animals, across agricultural and pharmaceutical applications.

Prior to joining MVS, Cassie was Chief IP & Regulatory Officer for Genus, PLC. Cassie joined Genus in September 2014 from Pioneer DuPont, where she served for 14 years in research, legal and management roles including IP Counsel, Senior Regulatory Counsel, and Director in the Agricultural Biotechnology group.

With her direct scientific, IP, regulatory and business leadership experience, Cassie is able to advise clients in product life-cycle management. From discovery through post-product launch, including intellectual property, crisis management, compliance, stewardship, regulatory data package generation, lobbying, and obtaining regulatory permits and approvals with USDA, FDA, EPA, Cassie’s experience is well equipped to answer your business questions and help fulfill your strategic business goals. Careful coordination of IP and regulatory strategies is critical for biotechnology products. Cassie’s unique background allows her to coordinate patent prosecution, patent marking, enforcement, licensing, freedom to operate, and IP litigation programs while keeping potential regulatory implications in mind.

Cassie is an active speaker on gene editing IP and regulatory issues. She is heavily involved in industry group policy and regulatory committees including IowaBio. Cassie is also a mentor for the Iowa Agritech Accelerator in Des Moines, and serves on the finance council for the Diocese of Des Moines.

Cassie completed Harvard Business School’s General Management Program, adding academic training to the global business perspective she brings having served as in-house counsel for U.S. and U.K. publicly traded companies. She holds a B.S. in Molecular Genetics with honors from The Ohio State University, an M.S. in Crop Science with an emphasis on Biomathematics from North Carolina State University, and obtained her law degree with honors from Drake University.

Representative Deals

I’ve had the honor of serving as counsel across plant and animal agriculture applications as well as human health, both for multinational publicly traded companies and startups. Below are examples of agricultural transactions – this list isn’t intended to be a complete accounting of what I’ve worked on, but to provide context for general scope of experience.

These representative deals include multimillion-dollar global IP licenses, research collaborations, funding rounds, JV formation, and M&A activity. In a few cases, I’ve linked to the press release.