After guiding Governor Maura Healey’s economic development efforts for two years, Yvonne Hao is taking on a new leadership role that could also have a big impact on the local economy: She is joining venture capital firm Flagship Pioneering next week as its chief operating officer and a general partner.
Hao said the job offer came together a few weeks ago over dinner with Flagship chief executive Noubar Afeyan, soon after her oldest daughter left for college. Though Hao has had other opportunities come her way since leaving state government in the spring to spend more time with her family, this one proved too good to pass up.
Afeyan said he created the COO role with Hao in mind as the Cambridge company continues to grow. More than 550 people work directly for Flagship, he said, and another 500 work for startups that Flagship is incubating.
Flagship, which Afeyan co-founded, just celebrated its 25th anniversary last week. Now, Afeyan is thinking about what the next 25 years will look like.
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“This is really a step in creating an organizational structure that would allow us to cope with our scale, and the range of things we’re doing,” Afeyan said. “Now, we’re at the place where we want to consolidate how some of these activities are being run and have her provide leadership for them.”
Flagship, perhaps best known for giving birth to COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna, is unlike traditional VC firms, in that investors place money with Flagship funds to invest in the science and business ideas being developed at Flagship itself, not at independent startups. While most of its work has been in medicine development, the company has expanded into agriculture technology and is making a push into artificial intelligence as well.
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The scientists under Flagship’s roof file hundreds of patents each year. Last year, the firm announced it had raised $3.6 billion from investors to launch and develop around two dozen companies; that investment round brought the total amount raised by Flagship for its funds since 2021 to $6.4 billion.
Hao came to know Afeyan during her two-plus years as Healey’s economic development secretary. She would turn to him for advice and to his annual shareholder letters for inspiration.
“He’s been one of the most impressive people that I’ve met, and we’ve had some of the most fascinating and interesting discussions,” Hao said. “He helped me think a lot about the ecosystem and what Massachusetts should lean into.”
Before becoming state government’s most prominent cheerleader for “Team Massachusetts,” Hao had a career in private equity and in tech, including a stretch at Bain Capital, and another as a top executive at PillPack, the Somerville-based online pharmacy startup that Amazon acquired in 2018.
For her replacement, Healey picked another prominent name from the tech investment world: Eric Paley, one of the founders of seed-stage venture capital firm Founder Collective. Paley started in Hao’s former job earlier this month.
In trying to decide what to do next with her career, Hao wanted a job at a place with a mission she believes in and an impressive team she could learn from, as well as the opportunity to best deploy her own skills and expertise. Flagship checked all three boxes.
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“This is a totally different model,” Hao said. “There really is nothing like it. It’s not a traditional venture capital firm. It’s also not a traditional company. … There’s so much more that Flagship can do.”
Hao’s job will involve overseeing operations, everything from human resources to intellectual property to legal affairs to real estate, while also providing strategic guidance, including for the young companies being incubated at Flagship.
“Noubar said to me, talking at dinner, ‘You should not do this unless you can’t not do it,’ ” Hao said. “The more I thought about my priorities, my stage in life, … the more I realized I can’t not do it.”
Afeyan said he had thought about possibly recruiting Hao ever since she announced she would be leaving Healey’s Cabinet in April.
“Pretty much anyone who knows her knows her intensity of thought and action, her commitment, drive, and reach, basically in terms of the range of things she’s experienced in,” Afeyan said. “Yvonne joining [is] a really important milestone.”
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.