Judy Costello is the Director of Economic Development Special Projects in the office of the County Executive of Montgomery County, Maryland. In this role, she supports a wide range of business growth, expansion, and international partnership activities for organizations of varying sizes and industry sectors. She provides guidance to the County’s Business Center and on a variety of economic development activities. 

Before joining the County in 2021, she worked as Managing Director of Economic Development for BioHealth Innovation, Inc., Director of the Maryland Department of Commerce's Office of BioHealth and Life Sciences, and as Deputy Director of the department's BioMaryland Center. Prior to working for the State of Maryland, she served as Executive Director of a nonprofit, the Business Alliance for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, where she organized venture pitch forums, entrepreneur bootcamps, tech transfer showcases, educational seminars, and other programs connecting entrepreneurs, faculty innovators, students, and industry leaders in Maryland, DC and Virginia with each other and with those providing funding and other resources to young companies. 

Before joining the Business Alliance, Costello held positions in economic development, financial services marketing, and university public relations. She is a graduate of Georgetown University, holds a MBA from Loyola University in Maryland.

Timothy B. Donaldson serves as the head of the firm’s Bio/Pharmaceutical Practice Group. Mr. Donaldson provides legal counseling and services relating to the procurement and enforcement of intellectual property rights, focusing his practice in the biotechnological, pharmaceutical, and chemical arts. 

Mr. Donaldson has more than twenty years of experience in all aspects of patent law, including drafting and prosecuting patent applications; preparing opinions of counsel addressing patentability, infringement, enforceability, and inventorship; advising clients in developing worldwide patent portfolio and prosecution strategies; diligence, litigation; and licensing. He has particular expertise in the areas of pharmaceuticals, modified-release formulations, small molecules, monoclonal antibodies and related binding proteins, including antibody-drug-conjugates, RNA interference, lipid-based nanoparticles, vaccines, chimeric antigen receptors, CRISPR, DNA and protein molecules, diagnostic and therapeutic methods, including oncoimmunology, DNA expression vectors, microbiology, fermentation and cell culture methods, transgenic plants, yeast expression systems, drug screening, cosmetics, and food products.

Before joining MH2 Technology Law Group, LLP, Mr. Donaldson was a partner at Latimer Intellectual Property Law, LLP, and prior to that an attorney with Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, for seven years.

Mr. Donaldson’s scientific background includes work in cellular and molecular immunology, parasitology, and viral-based gene expression in plants. He obtained a B.S. and M.S. in Biology from Wake Forest University and completed some doctoral work at Yale University before embarking on his legal career.

John J. Hemmingson is an entrepreneur, leader, and philanthropist whose extensive business career includes leading successful mergers, public offerings, start-ups, and divestitures. John’s extensive business experience, coupled with an insatiable curiosity and desire to understand unique business opportunities, led him to found Lakeside Companies in 1997.

Over the last 25 years, John’s leadership has grown Lakeside into an organization that spans multiple business sectors, including education, aerospace, real estate, agriculture, oil and natural gas, and construction. John’s passion and success with leading people have enabled him to selectively grow the organization with intelligent, visionary team members who execute Lakeside’s vision to build great companies that contribute to their communities.

Philanthropy is a huge part of John’s life and Lakeside’s Culture. All Lakeside organizations are rooted in John’s personal mission to give back to the community. John cares deeply about education, advocacy, and fighting poverty and contributes to many organizations aiding these important causes. John J. Hemmingson currently serves on the Board of Trustees at Gonzaga University.

Ms. Seileen Mullen served as the Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs. Prior to her present role, she served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs from March 2023 to October 2024, and Performed the Duties of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs from March 2022 to February 2023. In this role, she was the principal advisor to the Secretary of Defense and the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness for all Department of Defense health and force health protection policies, programs, and activities.

Mullen has spent nearly 30 years in or around military health. Prior to being named the Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs in 2022, she served as the Chief Operating Officer of Martin, Blanck & Associates, a health care policy firm, with a focus in military health. She became Chief Operating Officer in January 2007, and was responsible for day-to-day operations, including management of client relations, and internal communications and external partnerships. At Martin, Blanck & Associates, she worked extensively military health issues, including on matters relating to both the Click to closeDirect CareDirect care refers to military hospitals and clinics, also known as “military treatment facilities” and “MTFs.”direct care and Click to closePurchased CareThe TRICARE Health Program is often referred to as purchased care. It is the services we “purchase” through the managed care support contracts purchased care systems.

Mullen graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Virginia in 1984. From 1985 to 1993, she served in the House of Representatives in a variety of roles. She spent three years as a professional staff member on the House Armed Services Committee.

In February 1993, she joined the Department of Defense. From 1994 to 1996, she served as the Special Assistant and Executive Officer to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, where she provided advice and counsel to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs on health care and operational policy matters. In this role, she also contributed to the publication of the Final Report of the White House Task Force on Persian Gulf War.

From 1996 to 1998, Mullen was the Director of the Department of Defense’s TRICARE Management Activity’s Aurora Field Office. In this role as the Head of Contracting Activity, she managed TRICARE’s contracting activities, as well as approximately 350 personnel in TRICARE’s Colorado and Washington, D.C. contracting offices.

From 1999 to 2001, Mullen served as the Director of Federal Government Relations for the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the Olympic Winter Games of 2002. She worked daily with the White House Task Force for the Olympics in securing appropriations for the 2002 Olympic Games and all aspects of government relations at the federal and state level. From 2001 to 2004, she provided program consulting services to the TRICARE Management Activity in support of the TRICARE Next Generation contracts for managed care services, which represented $32 billion in federal healthcare contracting.

She served as a member of the Virginia Medical Reserve Corps during the COVID-19 pandemic. She is a recipient of the Department of Defense Outstanding Public Service Award.

Dr. Stefanie Trop leverages her experience in science and business to help innovators reach clinical and commercial impact. 

As Director of Life Sciences with the Maryland Department of Commerce, she leads statewide efforts to strengthen Maryland’s life sciences sector, working closely with industry, investors, academic leaders and government partners to build collaborations that accelerate growth and support successful expansion into the region. 

Stefanie’s earlier work included consulting in multi-omic and single-cell data analysis in roles at Beckman Coulter and Cytobank, where she supported biomarker discovery workflows for pharma and biotech clients. She also ran immunology studies in vaccine clinical trials during her postdoctoral work with the U.S. Navy. Trop holds a PhD in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

Dr. Vasan advises HJF leadership and staff on all medical and public health matters that may affect HJF teammates. She also leads global infectious diseases research for HJF. In addition to overseeing HJF components of the agreement, she provides key leadership for a wide array of basic and clinical studies. 

Dr. Vasan previously served as the Principal Investigator representing HJF in support of the Military HIV Research Program (MHRP) and Viral Diseases Program at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR). Prior to this role, she was Science Director and Head of the Nonhuman Primate Laboratory at the Armed forces Medical Research Institute of Science (AFRIMS) in Bangkok where she conducted clinical trials in HIV vaccines and therapeutics while developing animal models to understand HIV pathogenesis. This built on her work conducting research on HIV vaccines, therapies, and adjuvants at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and the Rockefeller University in New York. 

She worked previously as a Henry Luce Foundation Fellow at the Communicable Disease Centre in Singapore, where she studied patterns of tuberculosis and HIV co-infection and worked with the National University of Singapore to conduct public health surveillance studies in rural Indonesia. 

Dr. Vasan obtained her undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering at MIT before completing her M.D. at Harvard Medical School. She completed her residency in pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University.