Shakti Narayan joined Accent in September 2019 and serves as Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors. Shakti brings experience as a senior biotech executive as well as leadership in business development, operational & legal roles within the biotech and pharma industries. Prior to joining Accent, Shakti was Chief Business Officer of Tango Therapeutics, where he had responsibility for business development, finance and various operational functions and led a $1.7B transformational partnership with Gilead Sciences. Prior to Tango Therapeutics, he was Vice President, Head of Transactions at Johnson & Johnson Innovation, where he helped build J&J’s Innovation Centers model, led oncology business development efforts and led a team of deal-makers who drove transactions for multiple J&J businesses. He previously led business development as part of the management team at Nodality, a VC-backed personalized medicine biotechnology company, where he developed the company’s partnering strategy, led and closed multiple strategic collaborations and held various operational roles. He began his career in business development at Genentech and as a life sciences transactional attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. Shakti earned his Bachelor of Arts in biology from Grinnell College, obtained his PhD in cellular and molecular biology at the University of Wisconsin Madison and the Salk Institute and was a post-doctoral scientist at Stanford University. His legal studies were completed at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, where he earned a JD.