Poornima Tekumalla

Poornima Tekumalla, Ph.D., is the Senior Vice President of Program Management & Chief of Staff at BERG. In her role, she supports the President and CEO to address the needs of all stakeholders, Board of Directors and Senior Management. She serves as a liaison between the Office of the CEO and staff. She also manages external collaborations, due diligence logistics, and budgeting.

Dr. Tekumalla was previously the Senior Director of Program Management and Alliance Management at BERG, overseeing coordination of activities and maintaining timelines for internal cross-functional teams and external project teams.

Before she joined BERG, Dr. Tekumalla was the Director of Cell and Molecular Biology at Xtal Biostructures managing all aspects of client projects from initiation, proposal writing, project execution, budget management, and project closure. She is mission-driven and has a key interest in project planning.

Dr. Tekumalla holds a Ph.D. in Biology from Wesleyan University and was a Post-Doctoral Associate in the Departments of Molecular Psychiatry and Neurology at Yale University School of Medicine. She also earned a PMP accreditation from the Project Management Institute (PMI). Dr. Tekumalla has been a co-author on several peer-reviewed publications and book chapters.