Duane Valz JD

Duane Valz JD General Information

Biography

Mr. Duane Valz serves as General Counsel at insitro. As General Counsel, he is responsible for managing risk and structuring opportunities for insitro. He has led the legal and IP functions at prominent Silicon Valley companies operating at a variety of scales and growth stages. He joins insitro from Zymergen, a company applying laboratory automation and machine learning to engineer microbial strains for industrial fermentation applications and new product development, where he served as the company's first in-house lawyer and general counsel. Prior to Zymergen, Mr. Valz was a senior member of the patent team at Google, where he led strategic IP initiatives bearing on mobile, cloud, web, and open-source technologies. Before that, he served as associate general counsel in charge of patent development at Yahoo! Mr. Valz began his career at Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin (now combined with Arnold & Porter LLP). Over his career, he has been named multiple times to the IAM Strategy 300, recognizing the world's leading IP strategists. He holds B.A. and J.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and serves on the boards of directors for the Level Playing Field Institute and the Berkeley Law Alumni Association.