About Elizabeth Reed Aden

Elizabeth Reed Aden

Elizabeth (or Betsy) has a doctorate in biomedical anthropology, which includes epidemiology, immunology, virology, ethnography, ethology, and extensive data analysis integrating cultural and biological data to understand the natural history of hepatitis B virus on a remote South Pacific island in Melanesia (Vanuatu). She became bored with Academia and repackaged her problem-solving skills to become an expert in pharmaceutical New Product Planning and Strategic Marketing. Success in these areas led to her becoming Senior Vice President of Global Strategy for one of the top Swiss Pharma companies.

In her professional role, she developed a strong interest in personalized medicine and a passion for its implementation.  She was involved in a pharmaceutical company’s acquisition of a diagnostics group in the late 1990s. The company’s vision at the time was to accelerate the implementation of personalized medicine. Recently, she wrote a business plan for the implementation of personalized medicine in a G7 country. Inspired by her experiences, her debut novel, The Goldilocks Genome, is a medical thriller with a female hero who uses epidemiology and pharmacology to solve a murder and catch a serial killer.

Betsy is a native of Berkeley, California, and lives there today. Her BA in anthropology is from the University of California, Berkeley, after which she got her MA from the University of Cincinnati, where she was first introduced to the South Pacific. She entered the doctoral program at the University of Pennsylvania, where she found the perfect place for fieldwork—Vanuatu (formerly New Hebrides), which had beaches, sunshine, and French food. It was an area where the hepatitis B virus was endemic, an area of interest to Baruch Blumberg, who won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the virus. Their mutual interests aligned and this adventure forms the basis of her second book HEPATITIS Beach (2026).