Anabella Villalobos

When Anabella Villalobos left her hometown of Panama City in 1981 to pursue a master’s degree in the US, she was filled with excitement for what she thought would be a short time abroad. “I never really planned on staying,” she recalls. “I always had in the back of my mind that I’d be back.” But that initial journey away from the sunny coasts where Villalobos loved spending time growing up turned into a decades-long climb to the top of the US pharmaceutical industry. Villalobos, who now serves as the head of biotherapeutics and medicinal sciences at Biogen, has developed first-in-class treatments for neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s disease and made a name for herself getting new therapeutics into the clinic. She first fell in love with the molecular world during a high school organic chemistry class. “I actually still have my notebook from my senior year,” which she keeps close