AZBio Board of Directors

Claudia Whitehead

Bioscience | Healthcare, City of Phoenix

City of Phoenix

 

 

Claudia Whitehead currently serves as the lead for the City of Phoenix Community and Economic Development Department’s Bioscience Healthcare strategic initiative. Since 2019, under this initiative, more than $6.7 billion has been invested in more than 8 million square-feet of primary facilities creating more than 14,000 quality bioscience and healthcare jobs in Phoenix. Phoenix is now ranked as a top 20 U.S Life Science Market by CBRE. 

Claudia has more than 20 years of economic development experience working with municipalities in the greater Phoenix. She has worked to attract and facilitate the expansion of companies such as Bristol Myers Squibb, LabCorp, Sonora Quest Laboratories, NIDDK, Caris Life Sciences, Creighton University, SCHOTT MINIFAB, Exact Sciences, and GE Healthcare. She leads Phoenix’s promotion, stakeholder engagement and economic development efforts for its Phoenix Bioscience Core (PBC). She is committed to elevating the visibility of Phoenix’s bio/health innovation ecosystem and its four biohubs – the Cotton Center, the Phoenix Bioscience Core, the Phoenix Medical Quarter/Midtown and Mayo Clinic’s Discovery Oasis – to attract companies to join Phoenix’s rapidly expanding life science community.    

Claudia graduated from Arizona State University. She served in the U.S. Peace Corps for more than 3 years working with an affiliate of Women’s World Banking in the Dominican Republic and has served as a volunteer consultant to the Ethiopian Banker’s association in Addis Abba, Ethiopia and the Namibian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Windhoek, Namibia.

She enjoys riding her horses and hiking with her dogs on local trails with friends on the weekends.