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Cortex Board Member and BioSTL President & CEO Featured in St. Louis Business Journal

July 16, 2025

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by St. Louis Business Journal

Donn Rubin didn't plan on staying in St. Louis in the late 1980s when he took a job at what he said was then St. Louis' only national law firm, Bryan Cave McPheeters and McRoberts (now known as Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner).

Graduating with a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, and a J.D. from the University of Michigan, Rubin's early career did not immediately put him on a path to lead a bioscience innovation hub. But he says the path he took to get to his job leading BioSTL was all part of an "entrepreneurial thread" that stretched across his career choices.

The founding president and CEO of BioSTL went from Bryan Cave to post-Soviet Albania, and elsewhere in-between, before he landed on his longest job at the helm of the nearly 25-year-old innovation hub.

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