AboutAvance Strategy

Founder & Principal

Belen Altamirano Poblano

I founded Avance Strategy because I saw too many brilliant scientists and mission-driven organizations struggling to communicate their impact to the people who needed to hear it.

I've been there. I spent years in biomedical research at UC Berkeley, where I earned my degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology, worked in a drug discovery lab, taught Bioprinting, and helped lead medical education programs in Spanish. I then went on to work at UCSF as a researcher in an infectious disease lab, completed a Global Life Sciences and Healthcare Entrepreneurship course, and went on to help multiple labs and programs with their media and marketing.

I loved the science — but I was always drawn to the challenge of translation. How do you take something complex and make it clear, compelling, and impossible to ignore?

That's what I do now. I help science-based organizations — from VC-backed biotech startups to well-funded nonprofits — build communications strategies that actually work. Not the kind that look good in a deck but never get implemented. The kind that attract investors, recruit top talent, engage communities, and drive real impact. I'm not a typical marketer trying to understand your work from the outside. I speak your language because I've lived it. I understand the pressure of building something new because I'm doing it myself.