Frances Verter, PhD

Founder, Parent’s Guide to Cord Blood Foundation

First and foremost, Frances Verter always identifies with patients and their families. Her first child, Shai, was diagnosed with cancer as an infant. Dr. Verter fought tooth and nail to get the best possible care for Shai. Together, they experienced both the best and the worst of the medical profession. This background in patient advocacy was earned the hard way. Despite all the prayers and everyone’s efforts, Shai died of cancer at dawn on the day that she should have started kindergarten.

Prior to this, Dr. Verter had been working at NASA Goddard as a professional astronomer. Shai’s illness ended this  career in physics research because Dr. Verter spent too much time in hospitals to keep up with the cycle of publish or perish. After the loss of Shai, Dr. Verter took a job at NASA as a computer programmer and went on to have another two children. In all, she spent 25 years at NASA, which is a work environment that drilled in the importance of producing deliverables on time and under budget.

Meanwhile, in 1998 Dr. Verter started a website called the Parent’s Guide to Cord Blood. It was a spin off from the effort of investigating private cord blood banking for her second child. That hobby went viral and started swallowing all her time and interest. Eventually, Dr. Verter incorporated a non-profit around the website and switched careers to work as the director of the Foundation. This entails experience with web design, public education, popular writing, marketing, and fund raising.

In this third career in biotech, Dr. Verter has been able to return to her roots and publish research. Together with colleagues, she has published several peer-reviewed papers about the statistics of clinical trials in advanced cell therapy. She is a co-founder of CellTrials.org and is active in several organizations that promote biobanking and regenerative medicine.