I just love shining a light on women kick-ass entrepreneurs like Dr. Kristina Trujillo. A NM native who earned her PhD and BS from NM State University, Kristina brings a boat load of experience from both the pharma industry and academia to her role as co-founder and CEO of the startup TNeuroPharma, which is commercializing two products meant to detect and deter Alzheimer's. Amazing, right? You see, watching her grandmother suffer from Alzheimer’s sparked Kristina’s interest in finding ways to help Alzheimer’s patients, so she joined with nine other scientists to pool their research and technologies and utilize the groundbreaking tech invented by Dr. Chris Wheeler to launch TNeuroPharma.

You can read more about it in the article New Mexico LEEP fellowship eager to help entrepreneurs, as the NM Lab-Embedded Entrepreneur Program (LEEP) is helping Kristina’s company develop a simple blood test to determine the presence of Alzheimer’s disease and a treatment to prevent its development and stop its progress before extensive damage has been done to the brain. Kristina even hopes that the test can eventually be part of a patient’s annual blood screening. How incredible would that be?

Thanks to our sponsor, the fine folks at the Richard P. Feynman Center for Innovation (FCI) at LANL and Kristina, we’ll get to learn a little more about the NM LEEP program, as Kristina is just one of three tech entrepreneurs in LEEP’s first two-year fellowship cohort, which started early this year. The program embeds “deep tech” entrepreneurs — super smart people developing solutions to really big problems like climate change and disease — at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where they work alongside scientists and mentors to advance, test and validate their innovations on a path to making them marketable products.

So far, NM LEEP has exceeded Kristina’s expectations. She figured they’d help with the tech and access to expertise and facilities at Los Alamos and Sandia national labs, which she’s found incredible, but what she didn’t realize was how helpful all of the mentorship and extras would be. Twice a month, Kristina and her cohort meet with mentors who teach them how to pitch, fundraise, and write executive summaries and, in addition to providing technical support along with a network of mentors, customers, and investors, the NM LEEP program offers a generous stipend, health insurance, and travel reimbursement so participants can build their startup to thrive here in NM. TNeuroPharma’s backers already include the Arrowhead Innovation Fund at NMSU and angel investors, but as we well know, the job of raising funds is ongoing for a startup like this.

I don’t know about you, but I’m super excited to hear Kristina share more of her story at Paxton's Taproom, an extension of the Eldorado Hotel, which is one of Heritage Hotels & Resorts properties, a NM-based, minority-owned cultural hospitality company that was established in 2005 to develop culturally distinct hotels and resorts here in NM.

So, arrive between 6:30 and 7 PM to grab a drink and get to schmoozing before we settle down for Story Time at 7 PM. And since Paxton’s isn’t serving food at this time, feel free to bring in some take out. Can’t wait!