Caitlyn Harvey ’02
Caitlyn Harvey ’02 with daughter Alice and son Emmett. Harvey, who skateboarded around MDI as a student at COA, still enjoys longboarding with her kids. “If the roads are clear and not covered in snow and ice, they’re both outside on their boards,” she says.
By Kiera O’Brien ’18
Caitlyn Harvey ’02 knows a thing or two about trailblazing. Since leaving COA, Harvey has distinguished herself as a leader in the highly interdisciplinary fields of biotech and biopharma. Over the past 19+ years, she has worked with some half-a-dozen start ups and research teams to bring cutting-edge therapeutic technologies from experimental modality to FDA-approved reality.
Harvey found her niche by pushing boundaries to create solutions: “I’m always looking for the new and innovative, the path that hasn’t been blazed through the FDA yet.” Today, she is vice president of manufacturing and process development at Stealth Co Biotech. “I’m the keystone between the clinical and non-clinical stakeholders,” she says. Her task is to ensure pivotal therapies reach patients in a timely and cost-effective manner by bridging the academic, clinical, and commercial spheres.
The connection between her professional success and her time at COA is clear, if non-linear. “At COA, my focus was on island biogeography and entomology, so it’s not exactly applicable to what I’m doing now,” Harvey reflects, with a laugh. “I worked with Chris [Petersen] and Helen [Hess], John Anderson, Scott Swann. I did lots of independent studies and was a TA for Anne Kozak for technical writing. You’re working with all of these very pragmatic people, so even though you’re looking back and studying the ways these fields have progressed, there’s still an emphasis on What does that mean? Can you condense this?” This solutions-based approach is fundamental to the work she does today: “That pragmatism completely permeated my professional career and contributed to much of my success.”
It wasn’t just the sciences that shaped her approach to tackling new problems head-on. She recalls performing with former music professor John Cooper: “Composer Henry Mollicone wrote a cantata for COA based on the writings of Rachel Carson. I had to sing that in front of the whole community—it was a little stressful!” Moments like these defined her time at COA. When confronted with a challenge, Harvey says, she was encouraged to lean in and give it her best shot. “The professors at COA made failing okay. They taught me that failure isn’t a negative, but instead is the point at which you pivot and iterate. Think harder, think better. Think differently. That’s still the way I operate.”
The emphasis on independent thinking and “forging your own path,” Harvey contends, is the value of a COA education. “COA is unlike any other college or university that I have worked with professionally, which says something for it being such a small, unique school. We’re able to go out into the world and hold our own against people from Stanford, Harvard, MIT.”
As a donor, she hopes her gifts to the college will ensure that COA can remain one of a kind. A key part of this mission, she believes, is the diversity of the student body. “To me it’s one of the biggest advantages of the school: the swath of students that get accepted and go to COA and the incredible diversity of students in a small area,” Harvey says. “That kind of diversity is so important. I want to see that continue.”
