The Zicklin School “Changed My Life,” Says Scientist-Turned-Entrepreneur

Around two decades ago, straight out of a grueling molecular biology PhD program, Kira Sheinerman decided the lab life just wasn’t for her.

Kira Sheinerman already had a PhD in molecular biology when she enrolled in the Zicklin honors MBA program.

She decided to pivot and registered for Zicklin’s honors MBA program, which seemed a perfect fit for the ten-year plan Sheinerman held then. “I figured I would work in marketing at a pharma company, using both my scientific and business backgrounds,” she says. 

It wasn’t meant to be. The lessons she learned at Zicklin pushed Sheinerman to dream bigger — much bigger.

Today, the MBA ’03 graduate wears almost too many hats to count: CEO and founder of the molecular diagnostics company DiamiR, managing director at the investment bank H. C. Wainwright & Co., senior strategic consultant at the biopharmaceutical company Aptorum Group Limited, and a member of the Boyce Thompson Institute’s board of directors.  

But none of it would have been possible without Zicklin, she says.  

“I don’t think it’s a stretch to say the entrepreneurship courses changed my life,” she says. “I enjoyed them tremendously.”

Even outside of lectures, Zicklin gave Sheinerman the opportunity to explore her budding passion for the intersection of her two fields of interest. Halfway through her MBA program, she co-founded the “MBA Biomed Club” and began hosting panel discussions for the broader Baruch community, including one with then-little-known doctor and opinion columnist, Scott Gottlieb, who went on to serve as the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

After business school, Sheinerman used the Zicklin alumni network to get her first foothold in the life sciences banking industry. Today, whether she’s writing grants for groundbreaking Alzheimer’s research at DiamiR or working on financing life sciences at H.C. Wainwright, Sheinerman carries her experience from Zicklin with her.

“It really taught me to think outside the box,” she explains.

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