Our Story
We know who we’re doing this for.
Connovia began with a parent’s determination to change what the future could hold. It is growing into an organization built to bring patients, science, and the resources for drug development together.
Meet the founder.
Allison Pullins is a healthcare technology executive, a longtime patient advocate, and mother of a child with Marfan syndrome. She brings 20 years of healthcare experience to a problem her family lives with every day.
Allison helped build and sell MD Ranger, a healthcare software company, then led the creation of a commercial technology division within ECG Management Consultants. Her work has brought together teams, strategy, operations, and commercial partnerships to turn ideas into products people use.
She is bringing that experience to Connovia: building an organization that can identify strong therapeutic opportunities, assemble the expertise to test them, and move them toward partners equipped to develop medicines. Being James’s mother gives that work its urgency. Building healthcare businesses gives her experience in making ambitious plans happen.
My son James lives with Marfan syndrome. His condition impacts him and those around him every day. I want him to grow up with more freedom, less pain, and the chance to make plans without disease setting his boundaries. He’s got big dreams, and he deserves the chance to make these dreams come true.
Through James, we have become part of a community of people and families living with Marfan, Loeys–Dietz, and related conditions. These incredible people have changed our lives and motivate us to change the way we think about connective tissue conditions. They deserve treatments that improve their lives and change the trajectory of their disease for the better.
While we have medical progress to be grateful for, we have lost people we love to these diseases. Their lives were cut way too short. They are part of why we are willing to take on these hard problems and keep going when the answers are difficult. We cannot bring these friends back, but we can honor their memory with hard work, dedication, and resilience.
Connovia is for families we know, and for families we have not yet met. We want a different future for everyone living with these diseases.
We know what these diseases take away. We know who we’re doing this for. And we will keep working toward the day when an ordinary life no longer requires extraordinary courage.