Susan Nichols is the CEO of Propel Biosciences and a 25+ year veteran of the biotechnology industry, with a career spanning diagnostics, cell and gene therapy, and life science tools and services.

Her journey into biotech was born from personal experience — a brother with a rare disease who spent years misdiagnosed. That early exposure sparked a lifelong belief in the power of science to bring clarity and change lives.

Susan began her career in diagnostics, leading regional sales, national training, marketing, and new product launches in mature, highly competitive markets. There, she mastered the commercialization fundamentals that turn innovation into adoption.

Today, she brings that strategic rigor to the emerging biotech landscape — helping CGT and high-science companies navigate the commercialization gap with clarity, discipline, and urgency.

Susan has served as CEO of a genetically modified cell therapy company and CBO of a global viral vector CDMO. She’s held executive roles at industry leaders including Invetech/Danaher, Thermo Fisher/ASI, Hitachi Chemical, and Roche Diagnostics, and has driven commercial growth across CDMO, engineering services, drug development, and manufacturing technologies.

She is a respected leader in the regenerative medicine space, sits on the Board of Directors for the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine, and is a passionate advocate for patient-driven innovation, diversity in biotech leadership, and the success of early-stage life science ventures.

From funding to partnerships, from startup to scale, Susan brings the depth, network, and executional excellence to drive biotech innovation forward — all the way to market success.

Consultants: Propel Biosciences is more than a single voice — it’s a collective of senior business development and sales consultants who have led commercialization efforts across top-tier biotech, CGT, and life science organizations. Our extended team brings decades of in-field experience, spanning BD strategy, enterprise sales, and global market expansion.

While we keep our collaborators and client relationships confidential, our impact is clear: we operate as an embedded growth engine, equipping scientific innovators with the commercial power they need — without the overhead or risk of hiring before they're ready.