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This flight in time toward internal fitness and entrepreneurship began at a definitive moment—when serendipity called (well, actually, I made a phone call) in 2004. It was just after I graduated from MIT, and after I won the Miss Massachusetts scholarship pageant on the third attempt.
Time flies.
Time flies even faster the older you get and the more engaged you are with what you do.
Because I am passionate and feel very fortunate about what I do, the past 14 years have gone by in a flash. I frequently wish that there are more hours in a day to accomplish more.
It was a hot summer, and as part of my Miss MA duties, I was attending events at a local VA hospital, playing cards with the patients and talking with them over a cool lemonade.
It was there that I met the hospital's Head of Research. He asked me what I planned to do with my life, and when he learned that small molecules had been my long-time interest, he referred me to a must-meet person—Dr. Wayne Matson.
Wayne had just sold his company and had set up his lab at the VA hospital. He is considered a “Father of modern metabolomics,” and I was really excited to call him.
Besides having a long, impressive list of scientific and entrepreneurial accomplishments, Wayne is a wonderful, patient, genuine person.
One thing he said that I will never forget is: “I do science that impacts people’s lives; I want to prevent sickness before it happens.”
This has also become my mission. Because of this meeting, I chose to stay in Massachusetts and work with Wayne while deciding what to do next.
It has been a wonderful, though at times challenging, journey. But the purpose of Ixcela was clear from the early days.
We are happy and proud to be pioneering science-based personalized medicine and healthcare because our purpose is to positively impact our customers’ lives by preventing sickness before it happens.
And we’ve been realizing our purpose ever since.
ABOUT ERIKA
Dr. Erika Ebbel Angle received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 2012 from Boston University School of Medicine. She holds a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Erika is the Executive Director and Founder of Science from Scientists, an award-winning, National non-profit which sends real, charismatic scientists into classrooms to improve the attitudes and aptitudes of 3rd-8th-grade students in Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM). She is also the CEO and co-founder of Ixcela, a biotechnology company aimed at developing tests and interventions to improve gut microbiome efficacy and health.
