CEO Life Sciences & Pharmaceuticals Symposium

Adam Fine is a co-founder and CEO of Windham Venture Partners. Adam is currently Director at Coravin, GlySens, CuraSeal and HelpAround, Board Observer to SpineView, MC10, Holaira and VytronUS. Adam is a mentor in Blueprint Health, a healthcare IT accelerator in NYC. Prior to Windham, Adam was VP & GM at I-many, Inc., an enterprise software company. Prior to joining I-many, Adam was a New Business Development Analyst at Cordis Corporation, a Johnson & Johnson company focused on interventional vascular devices such as stents. In that capacity, Adam worked on a range of licenses, acquisitions, divestments, as well as strategic investments with Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation (JJDC), J&J’s strategic venture arm. Prior to J&J, Adam was a research analyst at Coopers & Lybrand’s Integrated Healthcare Consulting practice.
Adam received his BA and graduated cum laude with distinction from Boston University and received his MBA from New York University.

Alexey Margolin, Ph.D. is the co-founder of Allena Pharmaceuticals and has served as chief executive officer and director since September 2011. From September 2011 to February 2017, Dr. Margolin also served as Allena's president. From September 2011 to April 2014 Dr. Margolin served as chief executive officer of Alcresta Therapeutics, Inc., which he also co-founded and where he currently serves on the board of directors. From September 2011 to July 2013, Dr. Margolin also served as president of Alcresta. Prior to Alcresta, Dr. Margolin co-founded Alnara Pharmaceuticals, Inc., in 2008, where he was president and chief executive officer until 2010, when Alnara was acquired by Eli Lilly & Co., or Eli Lilly. Previously, Dr. Margolin also served as chief scientific officer of Altus Pharmaceuticals, Inc., through 2007, where he initiated and led several therapeutics programs based on protein crystallization technology. In 2003, Dr. Margolin was elected fellow of the American Institute of Medicine and Biological Engineering. He is the author of more than 60 publications and is an inventor on several patents. Dr. Margolin holds both his M.S. in chemistry and Ph.D. in bio-organic chemistry from Moscow University.

Alex focuses on investments in the biopharmaceuticals industry, especially in pharmaceuticals, generics, drug delivery and specialty pharma and biotechnology. He joined H.I.G. Capital as a Managing Director in January 2016. He currently serves on the board of directors for Leiter’s Pharmacy, Clarus Therapeutics, and Keystone Dental.

Prior to H.I.G., Alex was spent 13 years making similar investments at Thomas, McNerney & Partners. Previous board seats included Auspex Pharmaceuticals (sold to Teva), InnoPharma (sold to Pfizer), Quinnova (sold to Amneal), Celator (public), Zogenix (public), Tranzyme (merged with Ocera) and observer roles at PCI Pharma Services (sold to Partners Group) and Coley Pharmaceutical (sold to Pfizer).

Prior to Thomas, McNerney, Alex spent 11 years in the research department at Hambrecht & Quist (and its successor firms Chase H&Q and JPMorgan). During his tenure at H&Q, Alex led research teams covering the biotechnology, specialty pharmaceuticals, large-cap pharmaceuticals, drug delivery and diagnostics industries. After the merger of Chase H&Q and JPMorgan, Alex became the firm’s healthcare strategist. He was named twice in The Wall Street Journal All-Star Analysts Survey, including his last year at JPMorgan in which he placed in all three categories: stock picking (#1 in pharmaceuticals), earnings estimate accuracy (tied for #2), and ‘home run’ hitting (#8 across all industries).

Alex is the co-chair of the Business Advisory Council of the Children’s Tumor Foundation, an advisor for the Partnership Fund of NYC, which manages a bioaccelarator to advance local healthcare research, and is on the Life Sciences Council for Springboard Enterprises, a group that assists women entrepreneurs. He is also a board member for the Greenwich Council of the Boy Scouts of America.

He graduated magna cum laude from Brown University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Dr. Schiff joined Aisling in September of 1999 and currently serves as one of the Managing Partners.
Prior to Aisling Capital, Dr. Schiff practiced internal medicine for six years at The New York Presbyterian
Hospital, where he maintains his position as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine.
Dr. Schiff currently serves as a director of Aclaris Therapeutics, ARMGO Pharma, and PowerVision, and
as a Board observer of Harmony Biosciences and Zavante Therapeutics. Previously, he served as a
director of Adams Respiratory Therapeutics, Agile Therapeutics, ArgiNOx Pharmaceuticals, Barrier
Therapeutics, Bioenvision, CardioKine, Cempra Pharmaceuticals, Miramar Labs, Myogen, SkinMedica,
Sirion Therapeutics, TransEnterix, ZELTIQ Aesthetics, and Quintiles (Board observer). He is a longtime
supporter and Board member of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York.
Dr. Schiff received his M.D. from Cornell University Medical College, his M.B.A. from Columbia Business
School, and his B.S. with honors in Neuroscience from Brown University.

Bill Korn is a seven-time Chief Financial Officer and former IBM executive with more than 30 years of experience managing fast growth businesses, seeking Board of Directors opportunities where he can contribute his proven expertise in strategy and finance.

Bill was a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors and has actively participated in over 100 Board meetings during the past 15 years, leading discussions about strategy, acquisitions, raising capital, and financial performance. He is currently Chief Financial Officer of MTBC (Nasdaq: MTBC), provider of cloud-based healthcare IT solutions and services. He brought MTBC public on Nasdaq in 2014, buying three competitors simultaneously with the IPO, and building a public company infrastructure.

Bill worked closely with MTBC’s Audit, Compensation and Nominating & Governance Committees to create Board governance for a public entity, and actively participates in every Board of Directors and Committee meeting. He has worked with four of the top audit firms, and has led audit committee discussions at five companies. Bill has worked with three executive compensation firms, assisting compensation committees in designing comp plans at four companies. He was corporate secretary of Antenna Software and director of 13 of its global subsidiaries. He was an Advisory Board member of SnapOne, member of the Board of Directors of iRail, LLC, and a participant and presenter to Boards of MTBC, SnapOne, Antenna Software, Telelogue, Integrion Financial Network and Incomnet.

As Chief Financial Officer for seven companies, Bill successfully raised $350 million of capital, including 12 public offerings, 14 rounds of private equity and venture capital, as well as 8 debt financings. Bill has completed 19 acquisitions, including negotiating terms, arranging financing, performing due diligence and integrating teams to reduce costs. He has a track record of creating successful partnerships and joint ventures.

In addition, Bill has significant operating management experience. His leadership enabled Antenna Software to grow at an 87% CAGR during his 10 year tenure. He served as President of Telelogue, a venture-backed spin-out of Bell Labs that created advanced speech recognition technology; and as Chief Operating Officer of INFONXX, an Inc. 500 company providing enhanced directory assistance services to the wireless industry. Bill led INFONXX through a period of rapid growth in which the company doubled in size to 2,000 people over a 12 month period.

Earlier in his career, Bill spent ten years with IBM building its global services business, and was a co-founder of IBM Consulting Group. He served on the senior management team that created IBM’s highly successful services strategy in the 1990’s; was IBM’s first director of strategy for electronic commerce in 1994; and spent a year on IBM’s corporate strategy team during Lou Gerstner’s first year as CEO. He was instrumental in forming Integrion Financial Network, a joint venture of IBM and 19 premier financial institutions, and became its first CFO.

Bill earned his bachelor’s degree in Economics magna cum laude from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Dr. Spana, co-founder of Palatin, has served as president and chief executive officer since 2000. He has been a director of Palatin since 1996. From 1996 to 2000, Dr. Spana served as an executive vice president and chief technical officer of Palatin.

From 1993 to 1996, Dr. Spana was vice president of Paramount Capital Investments, LLC, a biotechnology and biopharmaceutical merchant banking firm, and of The Castle Group Ltd., a medical venture capital firm. Through his work at Paramount Capital Investments and Castle Group, Dr. Spana co-founded and acquired several private biotechnology firms. From 1991 to 1993, Dr. Spana was a research associate at Bristol-Myers Squibb, a publicly traded pharmaceutical company, where he was involved in scientific research in the field of immunology.

Dr. Spana received his Ph.D. in molecular biology from The Johns Hopkins University and his B.S. in biochemistry from Rutgers University.

Jake cofounded Celdara Medical and currently serves as a Director and as CEO. He had previously founded the New Ventures Office at Dartmouth Medical School and still serves as its first Director. Prior to Dartmouth, Jake led business development, open innovation, and knowledge management initiatives at Cabot Corporation where he served as a member of Cabot’s Research Council, Technology Board, and Nanotechnology EHS Council. Jake joined Cabot from PolyTechnos Venture-Partners, a Munich-based venture capital firm. He has served on numerous non- and for-profit boards, including Virtici, MBV, StemSynergy Therapeutics, NIH’s TREAT Program and the University of Vermont’s SPARK Program. Jake has testified before Congress on entrepreneurship, was appointed by the Governor to the New Hampshire Innovation Research Center’s Board of Directors, and by US Senator Jeanne Shaheen to her Small Business Advisory Council. Jake earned a B.Sc. with First Class Honours from the University of Waterloo, and a Ph.D. (Chemistry) as a Brown-Wetherill Fellow at Purdue University and Ludwig Maximilians Universität.

Jesús began his career in 1983 at the World Economic Foundation, and in 1989 at McKinsey & Co where he led studies in the pharmaceutical and food industries.
By 1993, he chose the entrepreneurial path by creating, investing and leading start-ups in Switzerland and the United States. He was for example a co-founder of LeShop in 1996, which became the Swiss leader in e-commerce and was sold to Migros.
In 2003, he created Eclosion, a public-private partnership for translating scientific discoveries in the field of life sciences into innovative drugs with disruptive potential. This unique structure was instrumental in the creation of GeNeuro, which was led by Jesús since its creation in 2006.
Jesús holds a bachelor's degree in industrial sciences, a master in law from Geneva University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He serves on the board of several biotech companies and industrial and business associations.

John Melo has 30 years of combined experience as an entrepreneur and thought leader in developing and growing technology companies and as a senior executive in the Oil & Gas industry. As President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Melo has led Amyris through successful technology development, industrial start up, product development and commercialization and a series of funding rounds, including the initial public offering. Before joining Amyris in 2007, Mr. Melo served in various senior executive positions at BP Plc (formerly British Petroleum) most recently as President of U.S. fuels operations where he successfully led a business transformation and significantly improved the financial performance. During his tenure at BP, Mr. Melo also served as Chief Information Officer of the refining and marketing segment; Senior Advisor for e-business strategy to Lord Browne, BP group chief executive; and Director of global brand development. In this last role, he helped develop the “Helios” re-branding effort. Before joining BP, Mr. Melo was with Ernst & Young. Mr. Melo currently serves on the board of directors of Renmatix Inc., serves on the board of directors of BayBio, serves on the Bio Industrial and Environmental section governing board, is a member of the Council for the Portuguese Diaspora and is a member of Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO). He was formerly an appointed member to the U.S. section of the U.S.-Brazil CEO Forum. When not working on the mission of making sustainable chemistry mainstream or championing the eradication of malaria, John enjoys skiing, reading and time with his family on the island of Pico in the Azores, his childhood home.

Entrepreneur & Investor

Dr. Matthew Rabinowitz has had dual careers in industry and academia. While completing his dissertation, Dr. Rabinowitz co-founded an intelligent online merchandizing company, Panop.com, which later sold for $100M. Shortly after, Dr. Rabinowitz started his second company, Rosum, which developed a location technology using TV signals to augment GPS. He received the World Economic Forum “Technology Pioneers” award for founding Rosum and Natera.

In 2003, Dr. Rabinowitz’s life took a turn; a family member had a child born with a genetic disease, and the child passed away in infancy. Dr. Rabinowitz experienced firsthand the trauma, stress, and devastation that an unexpected diagnosis of genetic disease can bring to a family and was moved to action.

Drawing on expertise from his seemingly unrelated background, Dr. Rabinowitz embarked on a journey to ensure that other families need not experience similar pain. Through a team of experts in medicine, engineering, statistics, and genetics, along with Dr. Rabinowitz's own skills in optimization, signal processing, informatics, and entrepreneurship – Natera was born. Natera’s results have been remarkable; Dr. Rabinowitz and the entire Natera team are dedicated to bringing breakthrough technology to all.

Dr. Rabinowitz is now an authority in the field of prenatal and preconception informatics-based genetic testing. He has served as the Principal Investigator on six research grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health. Multiple publications have emerged in leading journals including Bioinformatics, Human Reproduction, and Molecular Human Reproduction. He actively presents at medical conferences around the world, including at the annual meeting of the American College of Medical Genetics, American Society of Reproductive Medicine, and Fetal Medicine Foundation World Congress.

Dr. Rabinowitz is a board member, advisor, and angel investor for multiple companies in biotechnology, communications, cleantech and healthcare. He has received the Scott Helt Memorial Award from IEEE and was selected by MIT Technology Review Magazine as one of the top 35 technology innovators under 35 in the United States.

Dr. Rabinowitz completed his B.A., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees at Stanford University, receiving both the Levin and Terman Awards — the highest academic honors offered in engineering and physics — and a graduate fellowship to the school of engineering.

Dr. Kertesz co-founded Karius in 2014 to bring the pathogen detection technology he and colleagues developed at Stanford closer to the bedside. Prior to that, he was the CEO and co-founder of Moleculo, a long-reads DNA sequencing company, which was acquired by Illumina in late 2012. Dr. Kertesz earned an MS in computer science from Tel Aviv University and a PhD in computational biology from the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Patrick Griffin, M.D., is a board-certified physician in both internal medicine and gastroenterology, and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. He received his medical degree from Columbia University, completing a residency in internal medicine at Presbyterian Hospital in New York, and a fellowship in gastroenterology at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Following his residency and fellowship, Dr. Griffin joined the medical faculty of Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he held a number of academic, clinical research, teaching and management positions, as well as a solo private practice in New York. He subsequently moved to the biopharmaceutical industry, where he held positions of increasing responsibility, first at Forest Laboratories, and subsequently at Sanofi-Aventis, culminating with his appointment as Associate Vice-President, Clinical Development.

Rachel is a co-founder of Caribou Biosciences and has been President and CEO since its inception in 2011. She has a research background in CRISPR-Cas biology, and is also a co-founder of Intellia Therapeutics. In 2014, she was named by Forbes Magazine to the "30 Under 30" list in Science and Healthcare, and in 2016, Fortune Magazine named her to the "40 Under 40" list of the most influential young people in business. In 2018, the Association for Women in Science recognized Rachel with the annual Next Generation Award. Rachel is an inventor on several patents and patent applications covering multiple CRISPR-based technologies, and she has co-authored scientific papers in high impact journals characterizing CRISPR-Cas systems. Rachel earned an A.B. in Biological Sciences from Harvard College, and received a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Amado has served as Chief Medical Officer of Adaptimmune since March 2015 and has 15 years of experience within the biotech and pharma industries. Dr. Amado leads clinical strategy and is responsible for the execution of clinical development program globally. He formerly served as Senior Vice President and Head of Oncology R&D at GSK, where he was responsible for integrating oncology R&D activities, from drug target identification to clinical development and registration globally.
Dr. Amado joined GSK in 2008 as Vice President of Clinical Development, and served in positions of increasing responsibility, including Senior Vice President and Head of Oncology Clinical Development. He oversaw the development and registration globally of over 15 indications across six products and led the development of a pipeline of products in novel areas of cancer biology such as signal transduction, epigenetics and cancer immunology. Prior to joining GSK, Dr. Amado was Executive Director of Therapeutic Oncology at Amgen from 2003 to 2008 where he was responsible for development activities of several assets. Dr. Amado trained as a Hematologist/Oncologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he remained as faculty for eight years until joining Amgen in 2003. He holds an M.D. from the University of Seville School of Medicine in Spain, and performed his residency in Internal Medicine at Michael Reese Hospital, a University of Chicago Affiliated Hospital, and his fellowship in Hematology/Oncology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Roger D. Tung, Ph.D. is our co-founder and has served as our President and Chief Executive Officer and as a member of our board of directors since April 2006. Before Concert, Dr. Tung was a founding scientist at Vertex, a pharmaceutical company, where he was employed from 1989 to 2005, most recently as its Vice President of Drug Discovery. Prior to Vertex, he held various positions at Merck, Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratories, a global healthcare provider, and The Squibb Institute for Medicinal Chemistry. During his career, Dr. Tung has overseen the discovery of five drugs approved for the treatment of HIV, hepatitis C, and cystic fibrosis and was an inventor of several of them. Dr. Tung received a B.A. in Chemistry from Reed College and a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Troy Wilson, Ph.D., J.D., is one of Kura’s co-founders and has served as our President and Chief Executive Officer and as a member of our board of directors since our inception in August 2014. Previously, Dr. Wilson was co-founder, President and Chief Executive Officer and a member of the board of directors of Intellikine, Inc., a privately held company focused on the discovery and development of innovative, small molecule drugs for the treatment of cancer, from 2007 until its acquisition in December 2011 by Takeda Pharmaceuticals. He is currently a member of the board of directors of public companies Puma Biotechnology, Inc. (Nasdaq: PBYI) and Zosano Pharma, Inc. (Nasdaq: ZSAN). Dr. Wilson also serves as President and Chief Executive Officer and a member of the board of managers of private companies Wellspring Biosciences Inc., Araxes Pharma LLC and Avidity Biosciences LLC. He obtained a J.D. from New York University and graduated with a Ph.D. in bioorganic chemistry and a B.A. in biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley.