Established in 2020, the FasterCures LeadersLink Program is a capacity-building program to support the personal development of an emerging cadre of leaders of nonprofit organizations that fund or conduct biomedical research. LeadersLink focuses on building participants’ leadership skills and professional network and addressing their top priorities through mentorship, a capstone project, a series of convenings, virtual collaboration, and access to Milken Institute events and networks.  

“When I joined LeadersLink, I was eager to learn from other patient-centered research foundations, like ours, who have navigated and established programs like this. What I gained was much more.”

Kapila Viges is the CEO of MPN Research Foundation, with expertise in starting, building, and scaling life science and healthcare organizations transitioning from clinical to commercial operations. As part of her capstone, Viges explored the feasibility of developing a large-scale myeloproliferative neoplasm (MPN) patient data registry. Viges successfully developed a roadmap for the next several years, including launching a real-world evidence registry and collecting electronic medical records from patients, as well as an infrastructure to build on in the future.