George Eastwood

Board Chair for The Emily Whitehead Foundation

George Eastwood currently serves as Board Chair for The Emily Whitehead Foundation. Emily is widely known as the first pediatric CAR-T patient and the Whitehead family created the foundation to give back and ensure that more families could have the same outcome as theirs. Since its inception in 2015 the focus has been on funding groundbreaking research to create less toxic treatments for pediatric cancer patients, while simultaneously advocating for increased access to these therapies and supporting patients on their journey to clinical trials. George’s professional background has largely been focused on the creation of products, tools, and services that support the development of cell-based therapeutics. As an early employee at HemaCare he led global sales and business development, working to supply research and clinical grade cellular materials to autologous and allogeneic CAR-T cell companies . He also has experience in the start-up space both at Kytopen where he served as VP of Business Development and Partnerships and at Excellos, where he was a co-founder and helped to spin out the company from the San Diego Blood Bank. In addition to his current role at The Emily Whitehead Foundation, George also sits on the advisory board of Truetrials.org and is a board member at CGT digitization company Autolomous.