Founder and CEO, StemExpress
Cate Dyer is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of StemExpress, responsible for developing and implementing the strategic direction and vision for the multi-million dollar global company. Cate founded StemExpress in 2010 after seeing early in her career the challenges researchers faced in obtaining high quality specimens for research and the limited time hospitals and clinics had to adequately provide these types of samples.
Combining her business acumen and love of medicine, Cate founded StemExpress with just $9,000 and three procurement sites located in Northern California. Within her first year of operation, she relocated the company out of her garage and home office into a 1,500 square foot facility and opened a laboratory within eight months. Experiencing continued rapid growth, StemExpress moved into its current 19,000 square foot LEED-certified facility in 2012. StemExpress now has an on-site Donation Center in the new building for the collection of blood, leukapheresis and bone marrow.
StemExpress operates in more than 30 procurement sites across the United States and delivers product to hundreds of researchers worldwide. Since opening its doors, the company’s revenue has grown 1,315 percent under Cate’s leadership. StemExpress clients include almost every major medical school in the country, as well as all major pharmaceutical companies.
Prior to founding StemExpress, Cate spent 14 years in the health care and medical research industry. That experience continues to fuel her passion to advance translational medicine through her company’s ability to provide researchers with the critical specimens they need.
Cate earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from California State University, Sacramento. She maintains a close relationship with the university, regularly hiring graduates. Because of her company’s rapid growth and success, StemExpress was named one of the fastest-growing companies in the United States for 2014 by Inc. 500.
