Biopharma and life sciences companies strengthen their leadership teams and boards with these Movers & Shakers.
This week, biopharma and life sciences companies from across the globe announced new additions to executive teams and boards. These Movers & Shakers will help guide the companies in the coming years.
Chinook Therapeutics – Charlotte Jones-Burton was named senior vice president of product development and strategy at Chinook Therapeutics. Jones-Burton joins Chinook from Otsuka Pharmaceutical where she most recently served as vice president of global clinical development and head of nephrology. She has spent over a decade in the pharmaceutical industry, including at Bristol Myers Squibb and Merck. Jones-Burton is active in numerous professional associations and organizations and serves as president of Women of Color in Pharma.
Peptilogics – Nicholas Nystrom was promoted to chief technology officer. Nystrom previously served as senior vice president and head of computation and data. Nystrom joined Peptilogics in 2021 following nearly 30 years at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. While at PSC, he architected and served as Principal Investigator and Project Director for supercomputers. He was also Principal Investigator for the NIH-sponsored Human BioMolecular Atlas Program. In 2020, Nystrom was closely involved in the White House COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium.
Reneo Pharmaceuticals – Paul W. Hoelscher, chief financial officer of Horizon Therapeutics, was appointed to the board of directors of Reneo Pharmaceuticals. Prior to joining Horizon, Hoelscher held various financial executive positions at OfficeMax, Inc. and Alberto Culver Company. He also worked in the audit practice of KPMG LLP. Hoelscher has served on the Board of Trustees of the Illinois Chapter of The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society since 2007 and currently serves on the Chicago Regional Advisory Committee for The Ireland Funds.
CAN Community Health – Rishi Patel was named president and chief executive officer of CAN Community Health. Patel joined the healthcare nonprofit as chief pharmacy officer in 2015 and was appointed interim president & CEO in July 2021.
Perineologic – Jim Fortune was appointed president of Perineologic and Matthey J. Allaway was promoted to CEO. Prior to joining Perineologic, Fortune served as chief operating officer at Ocular Therapeutix, Inc. Before that, he served as COO at AccessClosure and COO at Incept, LLC. Prior to that, he served as COO and CFO at Confluent Surgical. Earlier in his career, he was a general manager at DePuy Synthes, the orthopedics company of Johnson & Johnson. Allaway is the founder of Perineologic and has been a practicing urologist and managing partner at Urology Associates in Cumberland, Maryland.
Vida Health – Patrick Carroll was appointed chief medical officer of Vida Health. Carroll joined Vida from Hims & Hers where he also served as CMO. Prior to Hims & Hers, Carroll served as the CMO of Walgreens. He also spent time as the CMO of Integrated Care Partners, Hartford HealthCare’s clinical integration organization where he played a key role in its transition to value-based care.
LoQus23 Therapeutics – Melanie Ivarsson was named a non-executive director of the board of directors of LoQus. Ivarsson has more than 20 years of experience at pharmaceutical companies including Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Shire and Takeda. She is currently chief development officer at Moderna, where she oversees the delivery of all clinical development programs across the company’s portfolio and led clinical trials to develop one of the world’s first Covid-19 vaccines. Ivarsson was awarded the Order of the British Empire in the 2022 New Year’s Honors List for Services to Public Health.
Capitainer – Donald H. Chace has been appointed as Capitainer representative for North Americas. Chace is also a longstanding advocate of DBS testing, being of one of the primary developers of the newborn metabolic screening test known as Tandem Mass Spectrometry of Amino Acids and Acylcarnitines.
H.E.L. Group – Rajeev Kumria was named general manager of H.E.L. India. Kumria has extensive experience managing businesses in South Asia, holding leadership roles in companies such as Getinge Medical India, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Transasia Biomedical and Bharat Serums and Vaccines Ltd. He has managed acquisitions in both the USA and Europe as well as being involved in incubating and guiding start-ups in the field of Genetics and Mechanical Ventilation throughout his career.
Hyalex Orthopaedics – Carl Vause was named president and CEO of Hyalex Orthopaedics. Prior to joining Hyalex, he served as vice president, marketing at CONMED Orthopedic Solutions, CEO of Soft Robotics and global joint repair franchise leader at Smith & Nephew.
Flagship Pioneering – Tom DiLenge has joined Flagship Pioneering in a newly-created role as senior partner of global public policy, regulatory & governmental strategy. DiLenge will lead and develop Flagship’s public policy, regulatory and government affairs functions to advance the company’s priorities at the federal, state and global levels. He most recently served as the president of the Advocacy, Law & Public Policy Division of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization. Prior to this role, DiLenge served as BIO’s general counsel and vice president for legal and intellectual property.
Herophilus – Bay Area-based Herophilus named Brad Savall as vice president and head of chemistry. Prior to joining Herophilus, Savall served as director of medicinal chemistry at Plexium where he led efforts to leverage the company’s phenotypic screening platform in order to discover novel monovalent degraders. Prior to Plexium, he served as the associate director of drug discovery at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, leading medicinal chemistry and drug discovery efforts on multiple early and mid-stage drug discovery programs. Savall was also previously employed at Janssen where he led projects for three drug discovery programs that delivered four clinical candidates across neuroscience and immunology.
Adjuvance Technologies – Philip Krause is taking on a strategic advisory role with Adjuvance. Krause recently served as the deputy director, Office of Vaccines Research and Review of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. He will provide strategic consulting on vaccine development, U.S. and international regulatory affairs, clinical trial design and evaluation, virology and immunology and global health.
Ideal Protein – Dawn Halkuff was named CEO of Canada-based Ideal Protein. Prior to Ideal Protein, Halkuff was chief commercial officer at TherapeuticsMD. Halkuff previously held senior roles with Pfizer in the company’s global wellness and women’s health business units, respectively. Before Pfizer, Halkuff headed up global innovation for Weight Watchers International. She currently serves on the boards of Xeris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and the Society for Women’s Health Research. Halkuff succeeds Melanie Stack, who had been president and CEO of Ideal Protein since 2019. Stack is stepping down to focus on her family in the United Kingdom.
Ikena Oncology – Richard Wooster was appointed to the board of directors of Ikena. Wooster most recently served as the chief scientific officer at Translate Bio, which was acquired by Sanofi in September 2021. Wooster joined Translate Bio from Tarveda Therapeutics where he was CSO and president of R&D. Prior to Tarveda, he was vice president and discovery performance unit head in oncology at GlaxoSmithKline.
F2G – F2G has announced a trio of appointments to its executive team and board of directors. Mark Baglin joins as CCO, Janelle Anderson as CBO, and Sylvie Gregoire as non-executive director. Baglin joins from Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, where he was most recently senior vice president and head of marketed products. Before that, he led the business’ global marketing and commercial strategy teams, delivering three successful global rare disease product launches in four years. Prior to joining Alnylam, he spent seven years at Shire. Anderson most recently served as CSO of Century Therapeutics, a biotech company developing immune cell therapies for oncology, which she helped to build and fund while at Versant Ventures. Prior to Century, Anderson led the finance team for the biologics and vaccines R&D group at Merck, where she also co-founded the business’s therapeutics-focused venture capital arm, MRL Ventures. She is a board member of Gardiner Healthcare Acquisition Corp. Gregoire joins the board as non-executive director. She is currently executive chair and co-founder of EIP Pharma, a business focused on neurodegenerative diseases. Before EIP, Gregoire was president of Shire’s rare disease division for six years. She has also held senior executive roles at IDM Pharma, now owned by Takeda, and GlycoFi, acquired by Merck. Gregoire currently serves on the boards of Novo Nordisk and Perkin Elmer.
Brii Biosciences Limited – Karen D. Neuendorff was named chief people officer and head of human resources at Brii. Before Brii Bio, Neuendorff served as the senior vice president of human resources at WeDriveU. Prior to that, she served as vice president of global human resources at Nexant for 14 years.
OncoArendi Therapeutics SA – Samson Fung was named CMO of Poland’s OncoArendi. Fung has significant biotech experience with senior leadership roles at several European pharma companies, including argenx, Micromet, later acquired by Amgen, and Morphosys. Fung has also held senior roles in clinical development, medical affairs, business development and strategic marketing at leading global pharmaceutical companies including Roche, Novartis, Pfizer, Novo Nordisk and AstraZeneca.
