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This week on JobMakers, Host Denzil Mohammed talks with Dr. Bernat Olle, co-founder and CEO of Vedanta Biosciences, about his journey from Catalonia, Spain, to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he continued his Chemical Engineering studies at MIT. Navigating the complex immigration system while seeking purpose in his career, he eventually found his calling and was lucky enough to remain in the U.S. to see it through: designing a new class of medicines to modulate the human microbiome. They duscuss how everyone wins when foreign-born talent is welcomed into vibrant, entrepreneurial ecosystems like those in the U.S., when they’re able to collaborate with others from the U.S. and around the world and come up with incredible ideas to benefit all people. Bernat also expresses a sense of kinship with immigrants far removed from the labs and boardrooms. He knows that the same aspiration – opportunity – attracted those who came here with nothing but a suitcase and a dream, as you’ll discover in this week’s JobMakers.
Guest:
Dr. Bernat Olle is a co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Vedanta Biosciences. He has been a member of the founding teams of several companies of the PureTech portfolio and served as a member of the Board of Directors of Vedanta Biosciences and Follica Biosciences. In 2013 Dr. Olle was named “Innovator of the Year” in MIT Technology Review Spain’s “Innovators under 35” awards. He also received the 2019 Barry M. Portnoy Immigrant Entrepreneur Award from The Immigrant Learning Center. He completed his doctoral work at the Chemical Engineering Department at MIT, where he developed a novel method for large-scale bacterial culture. During his graduate work, Dr. Olle was awarded the “la Caixa” fellowship. Dr. Olle received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Universitat Rovira i Virgili, in Catalonia, his M.S. and PhD. in Chemical Engineering Practice from MIT, and his M.B.A. from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He has published his work in journals including Nature and Nature Biotechnology.
A 19-year-old college student had a revolutionary idea that she imagined would make her rich and famous. She quit college and founded a start-up, attracting incredible attention, investors like Lawrence Ellison of Oracle, and a board of directors that included Henry Kissinger and George Schultz. She dressed just like Steve Jobs, in black turtlenecks. She had huge, mesmerizing blue eyes and a very deep voice for a woman. She was 
