Even As Women Remain A Rarity In Corporate Leadership, The Team At Nanotech Firm FendX Is Setting The Right Example

Women still have some distance to go when it comes to making inroads in corporate America. Only about 10% of Fortune 500 companies are led by women. Among tech startups, females make up just 15% of founders. And in the nanotechnology sector, having a woman-led team is quite a rarity. 

One company setting itself apart from that trend is FendX Technologies Inc. FDXTF, the nanotechnology enterprise from Ontario, Canada. It is developing products to reduce the spread of pathogens that thrive on surfaces. The company’s C-Suite, led by Dr. Carolyn Myers, is composed solely of women who have decades of experience innovating and leading, and that’s exactly what they are doing at FendX. REPELWRAP™ film, their lead product under development, is a protective surface coating film that when applied, prevents pathogens from adhering. It also reduces the transmission of germs on surfaces that are prone to contamination. 

A Visionary Leader 

Dr. Myers saw the potential in the nanotechnology being produced out of McMaster University and in February 2021 licensed it to create FendX. Since then Dr. Myers, along with her team, has been developing two surface coating products that have the potential to slow the spread of pathogens such as MRSA and viruses. 

Protecting surfaces from pathogens is big business, with Future Markets forecasting that the global antimicrobial coatings market will reach a size of $7 billion by 2027. A big reason is the rise in healthcare-associated infections. According to the CDC, 1 in 31 patients contract one when they stay in a hospital. Healthcare facilities have a lot of places where FendX’s products in development can potentially be applied. Of the addressable market for FendX, medical and healthcare accounts for 38%. 

Deep Background Leading

Dr. Myers's foresight to enter this market and license the technology shouldn’t come as a surprise given her deep background. The FendX CEO is an accomplished senior executive with extensive experience creating, growing and leading healthcare businesses. She has held senior-level positions in the U.S. with large-cap pharma companies. She was the president of two businesses, one a revenue-generating pharma business where she increased EBITDA – earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization – by over 25% year over year and the other a film/transdermal development and manufacturing business where she provided strategic direction to develop products. She has also held the position of VP of international pharma business development and alliance management and prior to this held senior sales and marketing positions. In her tenure, she has brought more than 25 products to market in the U.S. and globally and conducted more than 50 licensing transactions.

Meanwhile, COO Andrea Mulder is a senior commercial healthcare executive with significant marketing and operations experience who has led the successful launch of more than 10 products in Canada. 

At FendX, Dr. Myers and Ms. Mulder form a very powerful team whereby Carolyn provides the vision and strategic direction, and Andrea runs the operations. CFO Rose Zanic has extensive capital market and corporate finance expertise and has significant experience advising Canadian public companies with financing, M&A and company administration.  

Bringing REPELWRAP™ To The Market

This team has a wealth of experience, and with Dr. Myers at the helm, they seem to be demonstrating their prowess. In June, just two years after licensing the nanotechnology, FendX with partner Dunmore International Corp. announced that Dunmore was able to adapt the McMaster REPELWRAP™ film formula to their commercial manufacturing equipment, and on October 3rd, FendX announced they had successfully completed a pilot run on Dunmore’s commercial manufacturing line confirming REPELWRAP™ film formula can be scaled-up and is suitable for automated manufacturing. That’s just the beginning – FendX plans to leverage its robust patent portfolio and nanotechnology to research and develop a pipeline of other products to contribute to the global effort to reduce the spread of pathogens. 

Women leaders in technology are far and few between but Dr. Myers and her team are changing that. They are breaking barriers by leading through example and doing their part to make the world a safer place for everyone. 

Featured photo courtesy of FendX Technologies Inc. 

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