Linda Avey (née Bahnson) is an American biologist and entrepreneur. She is known for co-founding 23andMe, a consumer genetic data company.[1][2]
Avey was born Linda Bahnson in 1960, in South Dakota, United States. She attended Augustana University, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in biology, in 1982.[4]
Avey began her scientific career in 1982 at University of California, Irvine as a staff research associate.[5]
She also held positions at Spotfire,[6] Chemdex, Applied Biosystems,[6] PerSeptive Biosystems, Molecular Dynamics, and Waters Corporation.
In March 2006 Avey, Anne Wojcicki, and Paul Cusenza founded 23andMe,[12][13][14] "one of the first, and only, companies to offer genetic profiles directly to consumers, rather than through doctors or researchers".[15] Avey left the company in 2009.[16] Cusenza had left the company in 2007.
In 2009, Avey launched the Brainstorm Research Foundation, to "creat[e] an outsourced potential to do research" with "initial focus is on Alzheimer's disease" to "creat[e] novel cohorts and collec[t]... phenotypic information".[17] In 2011, Avey co-founded We are Curious, Inc. with Heather Anne Halpert and Mitsu Hadeishi, a company focused on online aggregation of data from sensors, wearables, trackers, apps, social media, biometrics, and other personal data.[18] In 2018, Avey and Aneil Mallavarapu began collaboration with Naryana Health to focus on collecting and analyzing genetic information from populations often economically excluded, via their further start-up, Precisely, Inc.[19][20][21]
Avey is an advisor to Verily Life Sciences and is on the Board of Fellows at Stanford Medical School.[21] In November of 2023, Avey joined the Board of Directors of the Human Immunome Project (HIP).[22]
