Jory Bell is a General Partner at Playground Global, having joined the firm as Vice President in 2015.
Jory grew up in Rochester, N.Y., and went on to attend MIT where he earned three undergraduate degrees in architecture, literature, and earth atmosphere & planetary studies. After graduation, Jory worked as a researcher as part of the joint MIT/ Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute climate change program where he designed, built, and deployed autonomous deep-sea robotics.
Drawn to the Bay Area by his passion for entrepreneurial technology, Jory spent six years at Apple as a laptop designer. In 2000, Jory left Apple to found OQO, a computer hardware and software manufacturer credited by the Guinness World Records as having created the world’s smallest Windows PC.
Upon joining Playground, Jory discovered his passion for working with brilliant technical founders using science and technology to build massive companies to address large-scale societal needs. The first three investments Jory made at Playground are now unicorns with one, Velo3D, going public in October 2021.
Jory sourced some of the firm’s earliest investments including Nervana Systems (acquired by Intel) and subsequently led the firm’s investment efforts in deep tech areas including advanced manufacturing, aerospace, genomics, and synthetic/computational biology.
Outside of work, Jory and his wife can be found practicing acrobatics and tiger parenting their young daughter.
Jake Becraft is a synthetic biologist and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of Strand Therapeutics, and serves on its Board of Directors. Together with colleagues at MIT’s renowned Synthetic Biology Center, he led the development of the world’s first synthetic biology programming language for mRNA. Jake has been featured in Fierce Biotech, Bloomberg, the Boston Business Journal, and BioCentury, among others, for his vision and mission at Strand of applying this unique platform for real world disease applications. He has also been the recipient of prestigious national and international awards for his scientific and entrepreneurial achievements, including the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Award, the Andrew Viterbi Fellowship of MIT, Amgen Fellowship, and the Bristol-Myers Squibb 2018 Golden Ticket for recognition of Strand as an innovative startup. Beyond his work at Strand, Jake’s broader interests span synthetic biology, biologically engineered organism-machine interfaces, and the intersection of tech and biotech methodologies. He is an advocate among the life science entrepreneurial ecosystem for supporting young founders in biotech entrepreneurship. Currently, he serves on the advisory board of Starlight Ventures, an early stage venture firm, and also serves on the Executive Board of Public Health United, a non-profit focused on helping scientists better communicate their research for maximum impact. Previously, he served as a Science and Technology advisor to legislators in the Massachusetts State Legislature. Jake received his Ph.D. in Biological Engineering and Synthetic Biology from MIT and his B.S. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, graduating Magna cum Laude with distinction. He is an author or inventor on numerous high profile publications, patents and white papers, including in top tier journals such as Nature Chemical Biology and PNAS.
Tasuku Kitada is President and Head of R&D of Strand Therapeutics. He co-founded Strand and serves on its Board of Directors. Prior to Strand, Tasuku was Senior Biotechnology Analyst at Candriam Investors Group, where he conducted due diligence for the company’s multi-billion-dollar biopharma public equity investment strategy. At Candriam, he focused on cell and gene therapy companies, and also covered numerous oncology companies. Currently, Tasuku continues to serve Candriam Investors Group as an advisor. Prior to Candriam, Tasuku was a researcher at the Synthetic Biology Center at Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he became the first scientist to create synthetic gene circuits using synthetic mRNA. This was the first demonstration of post-transcriptional circuits that can be “wired” to create a variety of networks of increasing complexity, which enabled cell type specific expression as well as small-molecule based control of gene expression from synthetic mRNA. This important research led to publications in Science, Nature Biotechnology, and Nature Chemical Biology. The mRNA synthetic biology platform developed from this research has been exclusively licensed to Strand. Tasuku holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from University of California, Los Angeles and a B.S. in Biophysics and Biochemistry from University of Tokyo.
Stuart Chaffee, PhD brings a wealth of experience including contributing to starting four publicly traded biotechnology companies, raising over $900M in private and public capital, and $4.9B in transactions.
Chaffee was most recently Chief Business Officer at Affinivax, Inc., until its sale to GlaxoSmithKline in May of 2022. Prior to his time at Affinivax, Chaffee was Chief Business Officer and Chief Financial Officer at Praxis Precision Medicines, a clinical-stage genetic neuroscience company, where he raised over $100 million in private equity to fund an innovative pipeline identifying candidates for the development of novel therapies for patients affected by central nervous system disorders. He also served as Entrepreneur in Residence with Atlas Venture, where he co-founded and served as Head of Business Operations at Kymera Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company, started from the concept of using the body’s innate protein degradation machinery to target previously untreatable diseases. In addition to early-stage company building, Stuart has spent time at Amgen in drug discovery and at Biogen in several corporate functions. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from the College of William and Mary, a Ph.D. in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from Yale University, and an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
