Linda Avey

Avey was born 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] In 1985 she moved into various sales and business development in the fields of biopharmaceutical and academic research based in San Francisco, Boston, San Diego, and Washington, DC.[4][6] She worked for Perlegen Sciences (2003-2005), coordinating the world's first genome-wide association studies,[7] and for Affymetrix on the translational medicine team (2005-2006) with the goal of identifying genetic markers for diagnostic tests[8] She also held positions at Spotfire, Chemdex, Applied Biosystems, PerSeptive Biosystems, Molecular Dynamics, and Waters Associates.

In March 2006 Avey, Anne Wojcicki, and Paul Cusenza founded 23andMe, the world's first personal genetics service company.[9][10][11][12][13][14] About three years later Avey stepped down as the company co-President and launched the Brainstorm Research Foundation, focused on accelerating research on the prevention and alleviation of Alzheimer's disease.[15][16][17][18][19]

Avey went on to found Precise.ly, Inc. with Aneil Mallavarapu, PhD, bringing consumer genetics to the developing world.[20][21]