Duke Leahey
Founding Partner
Nidus Partners
Duke Leahey is a founding partner of the Nidus Partners (Monsanto, Bunge and Novozymes) bringing more than 35 years of entrepreneurial, technology licensing and intellectual property management expertise in the plant and life science industry. The breadth of his experience, negotiating agreements in academia as well as the corporate world, ensures Nidus’ approach to technology acquisition and commercialization is a partnership model for the industry. In their first two years, Nidus has started 7 companies in the clean technology area.
Starting his career working with avionic technologies in industry, Duke was recruited to Washington University in St. Louis in 1979 to create their technology transfer program resulting technology licenses earning millions of dollars in research and license income. During his 18 years at the University he initiated the first university-industry licenses in Ag Biotechnology, including virus resistance, Aagrobacterium transformation, Bt pest resistance, and expression of foreign proteins in plants, negotiated the largest university-industry research contract, resulting in more than $160 million in research and participated in creation of one of the first Venture Capital-University investment company (A/W Company), resulting in formation of ten new companies. In 1997, Duke moved back to industry joining Monsanto as Director, Technology Alliances Team, leading a team of scientists that optioned/licensed more than 50 new technologies and executed several hundred technology access agreements in rice genomics, Ag traits, Nutrition and Animal Agriculture. In 2002, he was named President of GD Searle LLC, (an IP holding company of Pharmacia and later acquired by Pfizer) managing the disposition of non-strategic intellectual property. In 2005 he once again moved into the entrepreneurial world, setting up Life Science Alliances, LLC to work with emerging high growth start-up companies. Duke was a former board member of Competitive Technologies, Inc. (CTT-AMEX), president of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), co-chair of LES University-Industry Committee and senior lecturer on strategic partnerships for Arthur Anderson Consulting. He holds a B.S.
Industrial Management from Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts and a Masters of Arts in Business Administration and Procurement Management, Webster University, St. Louis, Missouri.
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