Becky Furbee

I started out my career in R&D and product development after graduating from Marquette with a degree in biomedical engineering. I did that for a number of years within Johnson & Johnson, and that's also where my commercial career started. After about 5 years in R&D, I switched over to marketing, where most of my career has really been marketing, both in upstream and downstream, as well as in sales and other commercial roles. I spent probably about 20 years within J&J, and my last corporate role was with a contract manufacturer that also services the healthcare and med tech industry, prior to starting Illumina. About a year and a half ago, I founded Illumina Strategy Group, which came out of a desire to be able to do marketing a little bit differently and to bring those learnings and experiences to small to mid-tier companies and startups in the space. It's intentional that it's called Strategy Group, because I knew that if it was just me, our reach would be capped. So we really try to make sure that we have the right types of partners and strategic collaborators that can come alongside us, and we match up the task at hand to the talent and resources that will make it most effective.