Alta Partners, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm, has promoted one of its principals to director as it begins to deploy money from its seventh fund, which recently closed above its target with $500m (€398.8m) in commitments.

Before joining Alta five years ago, Alison de Bord was a senior associate within the life sciences investment banking group at technology investment bank Robertson Stephens. While at Robertson, she took on responsibility for executing corporate finance transactions including initial public offerings, follow-on equity, and convertible preferred offerings. She has also formerly worked in the business development group of biotech company Geron.