New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) today announced the promotion of Paul Walker, a healthcare investor focused on the biopharmaceutical sector, to General Partner. Since joining NEA in 2008, Mr. Walker has played an integral role in the firm's later-stage and public healthcare investing practices and established a successful track record of partnering with companies to accelerate growth and drive performance in the public markets.

"Paul's experience in the public markets and his ability to uncover promising drug development opportunities and talented management teams has been instrumental to the performance of NEA's healthcare portfolio over the past decade," said David Mott, General Partner and head of healthcare investing at NEA. "We are thrilled to acknowledge Paul's contributions to NEA's healthcare investment practice with this promotion to General Partner."

Mr. Walker has led NEA's investments in numerous later-stage and publicly traded companies including Acadia Pharmaceuticals, Aveo Oncology, Cascadian Therapeutics (acquired by Seattle Genetics), Immunomedics, and InterMune (acquired by Roche). In addition, he played a key role with NEA's multi-stage investment in TESARO. Mr. Walker currently serves on the board of directors for publicly traded companies Allakos and Tracon Pharmaceuticals, and is a board observer for Sunesis Pharmaceuticals.

Prior to joining NEA, Mr. Walker was with MPM Capital as a General Partner of the MPM BioEquities Fund, where he specialized in public, PIPE and mezzanine-stage life sciences investing. Previously, he was a portfolio manager at Franklin Templeton Investments. Mr. Walker received a BS in Biochemistry and Cell Biology from the University of California at San Diego and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation.

About NEA

New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) is a global venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses across multiple stages, sectors and geographies. With more than $20 billion in cumulative committed capital since the firm's founding in 1977, NEA invests in technology and healthcare companies at all stages in a company's lifecycle, from seed stage through IPO. The firm's long track record of successful investing includes more than 220 portfolio company IPOs and more than 370 acquisitions. www.nea.com.