Polaris Partners has hired biopharmaceutical executive Amy Schulman as a venture partner, based out of Boston, Mass. Schulman, who most recently was general counsel, executive vice president and business unit lead of Pfizer consumer healthcare, will apply decades of experience to the Polaris healthcare portfolio. She also will assume the role of CEO of Arsia Therapeutics, an early stage Polaris-backed company co-founded by Dr. Robert Langer and Polaris partner Alan Crane. 

Schulman is expected to assume a number of Polaris company board seats and continue to serve on the board of Cambridge-based Alnylam. At Arsia, she will work closely with Crane, who remains with the company as chairman of the board. 

At Pfizer, Schulman had a variety of executive roles including leading the nutrition business, which was sold to Nestle for $11.85 billion, and heading the consumer business, which comprised well-known brands including Advil, ChapStick and Emergen-C. She concurrently was Pfizer general counsel, managing a team of 700 legal professionals while overseeing IP, regulatory, transactional and litigation related matters.

Schulman currently is a faculty member at Harvard Business School. She also is the recipient of awards and accolades including Fortune's 50 Most Powerful Women in Business 2013, The American Lawyer's Top 50 Innovators 2013 and the Margaret Brent Women Lawyers Achievement Award from the American Bar Association in 2012. 

Before joining Pfizer, Schulman was a partner at DLA Piper, where she was a member of the board and executive policy committees, and built and led the international law firm's mass tort and class-action practice.