Kathy Terlesky, COO and EVP at Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research

Kathy Terlesky works for the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research as its chief operating officer and executive vice president.

The Frederick National Lab is currently operated by Leidos Biomedical Research for the National Cancer Institute.

Terlesky’s duties include aligning operational strategic priorities with the lab’s scientific, clinical and public service mission. She is also responsible for ensuring the efficient operations of personnel across different departments, including human resources, contracts and acquisitions, finance, project management, public relations and internal communications, according to her LinkedIn profile.

She transitioned to the Frederick National Lab after taking on leadership roles for Leidos Biomedical Research and its parent company, Leidos. 

During her seven-year stint with the research company, she served as the vice president for project management operations. Under her leadership, Leidos Biomed established an enterprise project management office to improve individual technical and project success.

She also worked briefly as the scientific program execution director at Leidos Biomed, during which time she provided interim program management for the Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium program.

She was also the deputy chief technology officer for Leidos. The role gave her responsibility for the technical review of programs, proposals and independent research and development efforts in biometrics, data mining, mobile forensics labs and intelligence processing.

Earlier in her career, she was a program manager at General Dynamics and a scientist at Monsanto. 

Terlesky graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University with a bachelor’s degree and a doctorate in microbiology.