Mehrin (Mir) Masud-Elias, Esq.
Board Chair & Corporate Secretary

Ms. Masud-Elias, originally from Dhaka, Bangladesh, is Chief Counsel for the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania and, as general counsel, oversees all aspects of the University's clinical and scientific research collaboration activities in oncology.

She previously was a corporate transactional lawyer in private practice focusing on the healthcare and life sciences industries for 11+ years. She holds several volunteer leadership and fundraising roles with various nonprofit and professional organizations and has been recognized for her professional achievements by a number of legal publications in the United States. She is a graduate of the Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston's Business on Board program.

She holds a Masters in Bioethics from the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), a JD from Columbia University School of Law, and a BA in English and Physics from Amherst College and the California Institute of Technology (CALTECH).

She is a poet whose aspiration is to challenge essentialist notions of what South Asian immigrant narratives does/can be. She has published poems in collected editions and journals and written essays for a Leeway Foundation grant-funded food blog. She is the recipient of the 2021 William Carlos Williams/Peregrine Prize from the American Academy of Poets and the 2022 Universe in Verse Prize from the Kelly Writers House at UPenn, and hosts and curates the quarterly 12G Poetic Circle at Twelve Gates Arts.