Alexis Borisy    Warp Drive Bio
Betsy Brown    Trio Clinical Resourcing,
an Aptiv Solutions company
Faruk Capan    Intouch Solutions
Marco Chacón, Ph.D.    Paragon Bioservices
Terri Clevenger    Continuum Health Communications
Brad Doerschuk    PharmaMed Research
Michael Fergusson    Ayogo Games
Patricia Furlong    Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy
Yuichi Iwaki, M.D., Ph.D.    MediciNova
Allison Kalloo    Clinical Ambassador
Peter Kirk    WorldOne
Ilyssa Levins    Center for Communication Compliance
Kevin Lustig, Ph.D.    The Assay Depot
Mario Martinez II    360 Vantage
Rick Morrison    Comprehend Systems
Darlene Panzitta    DSP Clinical Research
Tobias Ritter, Ph.D.    SciFluor Life Sciences
Leerom Segal    Klick Health
Kabir Shahani    Appature
Laura Shawver, Ph.D.     Cleave Biosciences
Andrew Stanger    GenR Media
Kenneth Tomaszewski, Ph.D.    KJT Group
Wendy White    Siren Interactive
The Entrepreneurs

Trailblazers
Not content with the status quo, these innovators in clinical development, communications, technology, ­advertising, and research and development are paving their own paths for improved patient care.

Dr. Kevin Lustig
Empowering Scientists

Dr. Kevin Lustig discovered a gene that is involved in the formation of a structure that ultimately forms the posterior end of the frog’s digestive system.
Realizing how brief life is,
Dr. Kevin Lustig forces himself to push every boundary.
Bold. Curious.
Name: Kevin Donald Lustig, Ph.D.
Current position: CEO and President, The Assay Depot Inc.
Date and place of birth: August 1963; New York
Education: Cornell; Missouri, UCSF, Harvard Medical School
First job: Newspaper route
First industry-related job: Senior scientist, ­Tularik Inc.
Professional mentors: Marc Kirschner, Harvard Medical School; Gary Weisman, University of Missouri
Professional associations: BIOCOM
Awards and honors: Red Herring 2012 ­Americas 100 Finalist; Richard Feinberg ­Memorial Teaching Award (UCSF)
Giving back: Smile Train; RareGenomics.org
Words to live by: The challenge is to be yourself in a world that’s trying to make you like ­everyone else
Twitter address: @assaydepot
Connected via: LinkedIn, Twitter

Knowledge is power, and Kevin Lustig, Ph.D., is on a mission to transform how research is done on a global scale, by empowering scientists.
Driven by the belief that it is only by empowering all scientists that the industry can hope to solve the very challenging and pressing problems facing our world, Dr. Lustig founded Assay Depot six years ago. The goal was to streamline access to research services and experts, and level the playing field between scientists: pharma, academic and start-up, and even individual (or citizen) scientists.
Pharma research has been going through a period of profound change, and Assay Depot is helping scientists to get back to what they do best: research.
By embracing technological change and global connectivity, Mr. Lustig and his company are simplifying the drug development process.
Through Assay Depot’s cloud-based platform, scientists — be they in an academic lab, a small start-up, or inside big pharma — can run an entire drug discovery program from concept to clinic virtually.
That Assay Depot is both innovative and effective is in keeping with Dr. Lustig’s tendency toward boldness — wanting to push every boundary — and curiosity — a desire to know how everything works. Perhaps even more inspiring is the fact that Assay Depot was built on a shoestring budget without any funding from venture capitalists.
Dr. Lustig continues to identify new and creative ways to empower scientists, such as the recent Open Science Challenge he spearheaded in partnership with Bay Area community hackerspace, BioCurious. Entrants compete for two $5,000 research prizes.
Dr. Lustig contributes his personal time to science education as well, recently volunteering at an event with the Salk Institute’s education outreach program for youth in science. He is starting a series of open science competitions in high schools across the country to help students understand that they can make the world a better place.
A motivational leader, Dr. Lustig never strays from the mission of changing the way things have been done in industry — removing inefficiencies, promoting innovation, connecting the world — patients, scientists, and executives alike — with the goal to ultimately change the culture of drug discovery.

Faruk Capan
A Step Ahead in the Digital Era

L
ong before people understood the relevance of the Web and social media, Faruk Capan recognized its value. Understanding that healthcare education and technology were a perfect pairing, Mr. Capan founded Intouch Solutions 13 years ago from his basement on little more than a vision and modest investment. Today, the company is one of the largest independent healthcare digital agencies with three offices and more than 300 employees.
The agency embraces innovation and integrates new technologies with a sound business objective in mind. He has been a trailblazer and leader in bringing digitally led solutions to pharmaceutical marketers. For example, he was among the first in the industry to identify the impact of the iPad on healthcare.
Mr. Capan cares that the products delivered by his company will impact patients and physicians positively, and maximize client ROI.
He brings to the industry a much-needed combination of creativity, innovation, technology, and execution to drive impact. Mr. Capan is always looking for what’s next and he continually brings forward-thinking technologies and ideas to fruition. He takes a positive perspective to problem-solving and to trends, creating innovative solutions to overcome pharma marketing challenges.
Faced with the many demands of a busy CEO, Mr. Capan still finds time to connect with his employees. His teams, peers, and clients look to him as a friend, advisor, visionary, and valued digital strategist.

Faruk Capan is a ­trailblazer and leader in ­bringing
digitally led ­solutions to
pharmaceutical marketers.
Faruk Capan started his first business at the age of 9; he sold light bulbs.

Innovative. Humble.
Name: Faruk Capan
Current position: CEO, Intouch Solutions Inc.
Place of birth: Istanbul, Turkey
Education: MBA
First industry-related job: Internship, ­pharmaceutical company
Professional mentors: Barnett Helzberg
Professional associations: Helzberg Mentoring ­Organization
Awards and honors: Forty under 40, Ingram ­magazine; Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year ­Finalist
words to live by: Be real
Twitter address: @farukcapan
Connected via: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook

Michael
Fergusson
The Game-Changer

Atrue game-changer in the ever-evolving pharma landscape, Michael Fergusson is creating new ways to connect with patients. As CEO of Ayogo Games, he is blazing a trail in healthcare by creating experiences through games that have the power to increase patient engagement and learning, while bringing about meaningful changes in behavior.
His knowledge of game play, how people learn, and why people do the things they do combine to produce award-winning games that give clients the edge on innovative ways to stand out in crowded marketplaces, connect with key stakeholders, and keep the well-being of patients front and center.
When the Diabetes Hands Foundation sought help to create the world’s first diabetes social game on Facebook, it immediately reached out to Mr. Fergusson. The result was HealthSeeker, a world-class application, which has repeatedly won awards, attracted headlines, and more importantly, helped tens of thousands of people touched by diabetes to develop healthier lifestyle habits.
Developed in collaboration with the foundation and the Joslin Diabetes Center, the game has forever changed the way companies approach educating patients with chronic, serious, or life-threatening conditions.
Being CEO of Ayogo is both an incredible privilege and a great responsibility for Mr. Fergusson, who says some of the finest people he knows depend on him to create opportunities that allow them to do their best work. He takes that mission very seriously.
He is committed to revolutionizing healthcare and avows that there needs to be a movement away from the concept of selling pills and devices and toward helping people manage their health. As he points out, the industry shouldn’t be in the business of selling people things they don’t want. And the reality is people don’t want pills, procedures, or devices; they want to be healthy.

Michael Fergusson won the silver and bronze medals for poetry in the Jamaica national cultural festival.
Michael Fergusson is one of the most creative, ­­­
thought-provoking, and inspiring change-makers to surface and make a lasting footprint on the industry.

Independent. Idealistic.
Name: Michael Fergusson
Current position: CEO, Ayogo Games Inc.
Date and place of birth: May 1969; Kingston, Jamaica
First job: Health spa, family business
First industry-related job: SoftQuad
Professional mentors: Dr. Bruce Sharpe, SoftQuad; Pankaj ­Agarwal, Optimus Information Systems
Awards and honors: Special Citation – Social Entrepreneur, Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year; Top 10 mHealth Innovators; Hottest Digital Media Company in Canada; Top 15 startups in Canada; Ready to Rocket List — Life Sciences/BioTech; Top Ten ­Innovators to Watch in Vancouver; Silver Health CLIO; Top 40 ­Gamification Gurus; Honorable mention: 2011 Platinum PR award for Social Media; PharmaVOICE 100
Giving back: Cancer organizations; a local charity that provides free legal services to the underprivileged in Vancouver
Words to live by: Today, I begin a new life; I am unstoppable
Twitter address: @fergusson; @ayogogames
Connected via: LinkedIn, Twitter

Patricia Furlong

In 1994, Pat Furlong founded PPMD with one clear mission: to end Duchenne.
Patricia Furlong listens to Elvis Presley singing Unchained Melody nearly every day.

Persistent. Determined.
Name: Patricia Furlong
Current position: President and Founder, Parent ­Project Muscular Dystrophy
Date and place of birth: Dec. 16, 1946; Cincinnati
Education: RN, BSN, College of Mt. St. Joseph; MS, St. Joseph, Ohio State University
First job: Retail sales
Alternative profession: Singer/songwriter
Professional mentors: H. Lee Sweeney, Ph.D.; Richard Finkel, M.D.; Linda Cripe, M.D.; Sharon Terry, Genetic
Alliance; Wendy White, Siren
Giving back: Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy; Gilda’s Club; Adoptions from the Heart
Words to live by: The meaning of life is a life of ­meaning. — Christopher Furlong
Twitter address: @parentprojectmd
Connected via: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
Picyourpath
A Call to Arms

The word Duchenne entered Pat Furlong’s life in 1984 when she learned that both of her sons were diagnosed with the fatal disease Duchenne muscular dystrophy. She wouldn’t accept that there was no hope and little help as an answer to her sons’ diagnosis. She immersed herself in Duchenne, working to understand the pathology of the disorder, the extent of research investment, and the mechanisms for optimal care.
Ten years later, she founded Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy (PPMD), a patient advocacy group with one goal: ending Duchenne muscular dystrophy. She is currently the president and driving force of the organization. PPMD, which began with one small office in Ohio, has now grown to a network covering Europe and stretching to Asia and Australia.
In the fall of 1995, she lost one of her sons to the disease and only seven months later, she lost her other son. Few parents remain committed to fighting Duchenne after their child’s death, but Ms. Furlong is the exception.
She remains just as committed to finding a cure as she did almost 20 years ago and is responsible for bringing this disease from a state of palliative care and no hope to the current state of research opportunities and multiple drug trials under way.
Ms. Furlong was instrumental in the passage of the MD Care Act by Congress in 2001. This action by the federal government led to interest in research from the pharmaceutical industry. She has also worked tirelessly with the Centers for Disease Control to establish standards of care for a disease that was largely ignored by the medical community.
Ms. Furlong’s tireless work in advocacy, research, clinical standards of care, and support for families has directly led to an increase in the lifespan of those with Duchenne from 19 to 29 years of age. This increase in life expectancy is the most telling illustration of what Ms. Furlong means to this rare disease community.
Each year PPMD holds annual conferences for parents in many countries to update them on advances in drug development and patient care. These conferences also provide an opportunity to help parents of newly diagnosed patients learn from experts and from each other how to ensure optimum care for their sons.
Ms. Furlong has not only inspired and influenced patients and parents through her role, but also doctors, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, other advocacy groups, and Congress. Much of the current clinical research into the disease is a result of her efforts. She has an incredible ability to raise money and awareness of the disease.
Ms. Furlong also was influential in building a department at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital that focuses on treatment for Duchenne; this is now one of the leading clinical treatment centers for Duchenne in the country and a model for others.
She is not willing to stop until there is an end to this deadly disease and endlessly works to push companies, Congress, and doctors to do more. Before she began her crusade, there were no standards of care. Ms. Furlong has worked hard to establish these standards so doctors throughout the world will be equipped with the knowledge to provide optimum care to their patients.

Peter Kirk
A Level Playing Field for Researchers

With a passion for innovation, Peter Kirk launched WorldOne 12 years ago aiming to change the face of global healthcare market research.
Through intuitive expansion, calculated risk, and the adoption of emerging technologies Mr. Kirk has successfully grown
WorldOne into an industry leading global powerhouse and diversified organization.
Along the way, his company has forged trusted client relations around the world and developed an impressive global networked community of healthcare professionals (HCPs), which spans 80 countries and comprises almost 2 million healthcare providers.
Under Mr. Kirk’s unwavering leadership, WorldOne has expanded into new markets, and the company now boasts 16 offices, including two recent additions in Latin America and Asia, with the opening of a new office in Shanghai, China, adding to its existing presence in Hong Kong and Tokyo.
Through Mr. Kirk’s vision, WorldOne has made a major impact by accelerating the rate of innovation in online data collection and significantly improving efficiencies and the quality of healthcare research.
Leveraging the company’s growth and global access to highly engaged HCPs, Mr. Kirk recently identified strategic opportunities to expand the business further.
In 2011, he recruited numerous industry veterans and boldly launched three new global divisions — WorldOne Interactive,
WorldOne Data, and Med360.
These new groups combine the company’s storied success and trusted global HCP communication with unique services, platforms, and products for the diversified healthcare and pharmaceutical industries.
Mr. Kirk’s stamina, dedication, and unconventional thinking have undoubtedly contributed to the rapid growth of the company and inspired his employees to rise to embrace new opportunities.
Mr. Kirk is constantly raising the bar and pushing boundaries in the industry. He challenges his team and his competitors to always work to be better, and he always starts by pushing himself.
According to his colleagues, Mr. Kirk embraces change and inspires everyone within his company not only to anticipate industry challenges, but also to be the catalyst for change.
Despite the speed at which the company has grown, Mr. Kirk makes a great effort to provide leadership to each individual in each office. He is aware of each role played by each individual and their importance to the company. This hands-on leadership truly inspires his team members and staff. As a result, they strive to give their best and all agree that there is a very bright future for WorldOne.
Like a seasoned chess player, Mr. Kirk’s focus is 10 plays ahead and his tenacious drive is infectious. He believes that there is no true neutral; all matters are either moving closer to a 0% or 100% probability, however slight the movement; so he chooses to seek better outcomes and make as many good decisions in a day as he can in the quest for perfection.

Peter Kirk did an Ironman in 2008 with only two months training.
Peter Kirk is a visionary person who has integrated an ­outstanding team that is changing the landscape of the ­healthcare research industry.

Rick Morrison
Comprehensive Vision

Rick Morrison is an Eagle Scout.
Rick Morrison’s vision, along with his drive and his skill, is to change the landscape for clinical trials technology.

Entrepreneurship runs in the family for Rick Morrison. His parents founded and own a payroll company, and one of his earliest childhood memories is sitting in his dad’s desk surrounded by supplies, pretending to “crunch the numbers."
Today, he is doing that with aplomb as CEO of Comprehend Systems.
Since Comprehend’s inception in 2010, Mr. Morrison has led the company to its first round of funding — $1.2 million – and the launch of its first product, Comprehend Clinical.
A strong leader, Mr. Morrison has a clear vision of the sponsors’ need for robust visual data reporting and analytics tools in support of clinical trials. And he is flawlessly executing on this vision with the development of Comprehend Clinical, which was designed to facilitate reporting across multiple data sources, without moving the data.
Mr. Morrison quickly learned that good developers don’t typically end up writing life-sciences software. The young entrepreneur takes pride in his ability to successfully lure top software engineers away from more glamorous and high profile industries, such as social media and mobile commerce, and into life sciences, putting their technology skills to best use.
And while technology drives his business, Mr. Morrison is driven by the hope of improving day-to-day life across the world by helping to bring new drugs to market quicker and more safely.
He believes that clinical technology will directly facilitate the next big wave of clinical breakthroughs, and he is determined to make Comprehend lead this trend.
Mr. Morrison’s vision, along with his drive and his skill, is to change the landscape for clinical trials technology.
He hopes to achieve this by making Comprehend Clinical ubiquitous in the industry, enabling access to the cloud, so that sponsors and CROs can access all of their most important metrics from anywhere.
Mr. Morrison understands that without making the clinical trial and drug discovery process more efficient, companies will be unable to remain competitive.
He says while companies have invested heavily in technology for the past 10 years, they haven’t realized the full value they were expecting because they don’t have the tools to bring all their new technologies together.
Quickly answering questions across all disparate systems is now becoming more critical than ever, given all of the pressures that companies face from regulatory bodies, generics, and drying pipelines

Entrepreneurial. Resourceful.
Name: Rick Morrison
Current position: CEO, Comprehend Systems Inc.
Date and place of birth: April 1981; White Plains, N.Y.
Education: B.S., computer science, Carnegie Mellon
First job: Busboy, Harvest Moon Inn, Ringoes, N.J.
First industry-related job: Software developer,­ ­Integrated ­Clinical Systems
Alternative profession: Theoretical physicist to ­understand and explore our universe
Professional associations: DIA; SCDM; OHSUG; ­Partnerships in Clinical Trials
Giving back: Kiva.org
Twitter address: @morrisor
Connected via: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook

Andrew
Stanger
Digitizing
Education

Andrew Stanger’s approach to creating engaging and effective digital programs for the pharma industry is to use new technologies and leverage existing ones in the most cost-effective ways for clients. The goal is to deliver educational and entertaining programs to medical professionals and consumers.
As president of GenR Media, a digital media company that works exclusively within the pharmaceutical and healthcare field, Mr. Stanger’s greatest strength is that he doesn’t see questions or problems, he sees answers and solutions.
With more than 13 years experience in digital marketing, he brings energy and vitality to discussions about healthcare. Mr. Stanger’s inspiring appetite for all things digital and healthcare related makes for an impressive display of passionate exposition when creating campaigns.
In 2009, he helped found GenR Media during the worst recession in a generation. Attesting to his business prowess, the company was profitable that year, and in each subsequent year since its inception.
Mr. Stanger measures his own success by the success of his clients. All GenR programs are designed to create the maximum return for clients, and this of course creates a relationship of mutual benefit. This symbiotic relationship means total investment for Mr. Stanger’s teams and a full stake in the lifetime of all projects.
Mr. Stanger inspires all of those around him through his market insights, leadership, support, and most notably, his generosity. He allocates 5% of GenR Media profits as charitable donations each quarter.
This philanthropy is not limited to just himself, as he requests suggestions from his colleagues and clients for organizations to donate to each quarter.
Organizations he has donated to include the Yankees Foundation, the American Heart Association, Susan G. Komen For The Cure, Animal Haven, AIDS Walk New York, and the Deborah Hospital Foundation to name just a few.

Andrew Stanger’s inspiring appetite for all things digital and healthcare related makes for an impressive leader.
Andrew Stanger played trombone in a marching band.

Passionate. Entertaining.
Name: Andrew Stanger
Current position: President, GenR Media
Date and place of birth: August 1977; New ­Jersey
Education: B.S., marketing/B.A., psychology, ­Rutgers University; MBA, marketing, Zicklin School of ­Business, Baruch College, CUNY
First job: Marvel Entertainment
Professional mentors: Marty Cearnal; Florence Michelet; Howard Kroplick; James Bargon; Susan Berkley; Stephen Glicker
Awards and honors: Omni Intermedia, Telly, eHealthcare Leadership
Giving back: Yankees Foundation; Damon ­Runyon Cancer Research; Susan G. Komen Deborah Hospital
Words to live by: Never follow in another man’s footsteps; you never know what he might have stepped in
Twitter address: @astanger; @genrmedia
Connected via: LinkedIn; Facebook; Twitter; Google+; YouTube

Dr. Marco Chacón
Life is Good

Marco Chacón, Ph.D., came to the United States in 1967 as a 17-year-old foreign exchange student from Costa Rica. He married his high-school sweetheart four years later and together they started Paragon Bioservices in 1990. For Dr. Chacón life is good. He says contrary to what people say about the downturn in the economy, the possibilities for success in the United States are still the best in the world — if one is willing to work hard and be persistent.
For the past 20 years, Dr. Chacón has been finding ways to survive in business and continue to grow the company, a contract research and manufacturing organization of 75 employees based at the University of Maryland BioPark in Baltimore. He is determined to reverse the innovation slide and maintain strong pharmaceutical manufacturing in the United States.
A standout among inspirational individuals in the life sciences, Dr. Chacón is a gifted and dedicated leader.
As a visionary leader, Dr. Chacón was instrumental in forging a public-private partnership for developing and manufacturing stem cell therapies. In 2011, UMB’s Center for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and Paragon Bioservices announced the formation of the partnership. In addition, in the last year Paragon has received two multi-million dollar contracts from the U.S. Army and the Department of Defense.
Apart from Paragon, Dr. Chacón founded Irazú Biodiscovery, a regenerative medicine company, in 2000. Irazú is based on Dr. Chacón’s own research, patents portfolio, and scientific insights regarding the mechanism of calorie-restriction protection.
Dr. Chacón is an active industry leader in his community as a member of the Tech Council of Maryland executive committee, the MdBio board of directors, the Greater Baltimore Tech Council biotech roundtable, and the Maryland/Israel Development Center as a small business member. Furthermore, he is actively involved with the University of Maryland, where he not only spearheads novel public-private life-science initiatives, but participates in community events such as the BioBlast education event and career day with the Baltimore City Community College. Finally, Dr. Chacón’s leadership and eye on innovation have been widely recognized through various awards and honors, among them the Pfizer External Research Award and the Eli Lilly Global Supplier Award. Most symbolic of Dr. Chacón’s visionary guidance are his Life Science Leader CMO Leadership Award and Translational Research Award.

Dr. Marco Chacón financed his education by assisting a group of pathologists ­perform more than 2,500 autopsies.

Optimistic. Creative.
Name: Marco A. Chacón, Ph.D.
Current position: Founder, President, and CEO, Paragon Bioservices, Inc.
Date and place of birth: June 1950; San Jose, Costa Rica
Education: Ph.D.
First job: Clinical laboratory
First industry-related job: Paragon Bioservices Inc.
Professional mentors: Stephen R. Max, Ph.D., University of
Maryland; J. Tyson Tildon, Ph.D., University of Maryland,
Pediatric Research
Professional associations: TechCouncil of Maryland Executive ­Committee; TechCouncil of Maryland- MdBio Board of Directors;
Greater Baltimore Tech Council Biotech Roundtable; University of ­Maryland Biotech Advisory Board; Maryland/Israel Development ­Committee
Awards and honors: Eli Lilly Global Supplier Award; Pfizer External ­Research Award
Giving back: Smile Train; Doctors Without Borders
Words to live by: Do not be afraid and live with the conviction that you will find a way forward
Twitter address: @paragonbio
Connected via: Twitter and LinkedIn

A standout among inspirational individuals in the life sciences, Dr. Marco Chacón is a gifted and ­dedicated leader.

Dr. Kenneth Tomaszewski
The Problem Solver

At 18, Dr. Kenneth Tomaszewski drove from Buffalo, N.Y., to somewhere in the middle of Iowa to pick up a load of fathead minnows.
Dr. Ken Tomaszewski is visionary, fair, and ethical — all of which are appreciated by clients and colleagues who work with him.

Ken Tomaszewski, Ph.D., takes an analytical approach to innovation, drawing on tools from economics, statistics, math, psychology, political science, and so on to quickly diagnose and predict outcomes.
An innate problem solver, Dr. Tomaszewski effectively leverages his deep analytic research training with his innovative approaches to addressing business problems to help clients make evidence-based business decisions.
His methods and insights are considered with the best interests of the client or stakeholders in mind.
In addition, Dr. Tomaszewski has developed many innovative solutions for clients’ unique business problems. He has also advanced understanding of the long-term care landscape, tracking caregiving, and other aspects of elder care through KJT’s self-funded Lightsource quarterly opinion poll.
The challenge for industry remains information gaps, Dr. Tomaszewski maintains. Without good, well-understood, and accessible information, decisions tend to be more random than optimized. This is exacerbated by the fact that today’s college graduates tend to have fewer analytical skills and a work ethic not on par with older generations, making the likelihood of waste in the system all the more real. To overcome this, the industry needs to take the role of evidence-based medicine seriously.
He strives to make KJT Group a wonderful working environment that is fun and that continually promotes excellence, both individually and on a companywide level. Dr. Tomaszewski encourages growth through mentoring and knowledge sharing and provides numerous career-advancing opportunities through industry-specific courses and conventions.
He has created a culture at KJT Group that balances work and family and encourages his employees to be active in the community. In addition to all of his responsibilities, he somehow finds time to squeeze in other leadership roles from being a baseball coach to Cub Scout leader.

Entrepreneurial. Analytic.
Name: Kenneth Joseph Tomaszewski, Ph.D.
Current position: CEO and Founder, KJT Group Inc.
Date and place of birth: July, 1970; Cheektowaga, N.Y.
Education: B.A., psychology, University of Rochester School of Arts and Sciences; M.S. policy analysis, ­University of Rochester School of Arts and Sciences; Ph.D., health services research and policy, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry
First job: Local flower shop
First industry-related job: Research associate, Gordon Black Corp.
Alternative profession: Retail sporting goods and firearms proprietor
Professional mentors: Bob Kallstrand; Art Coles; Bruce Newman
Professional associations: CASRO, PMRG, NCPP
Awards and honors: Rookie of the Year, Gordon Black Corp.; Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ); Harris Interactive; KJT Group named 21st in the Rochester Top 100
Giving back: Local organizations, including Little League, educational causes, music boosters
Words to live by: Do your best
Twitter address: @kentomaszewski
Connected via: LinkedIn

Bradley Doerschuk
Driving Progress

Brad Doerschuk visited Lake Kivu on the ­border of Rwanda and the Democratic ­Republic of Congo ­(formerly Zaire) at the time of the genocide.
Brad Doerschuk has worked to keep the light shining on small to midsized ­companies and their ­products.

In founding PharmaMed Research, Brad Doerschuk has shown unwavering dedication to underserved small and midsize pharma and biotech sponsors. His passion to give their often revolutionary and transformational products the expertise and guidance they desperately need has provided multiple products and companies a chance that they otherwise would likely not have had.
He has staffed and supported projects with some of the brightest, most respected, and experienced clinical research professionals in the business.
Clients say Mr. Doerschuk’s teams offer unparalleled excellence in clinical management and team monitoring across support, quality, staff retention, and efficiency — metrics that often define the success of a protocol.
He is tirelessly committed to achieving a culture of both personal and professional success and satisfaction. Mentoring matters to Mr. Doerschuk who believes that the more mentoring that he and others can provide, the more the industry can efficiently and successfully move the needle of medicine forward.
Family life matters to Mr. Doerschuk, not only for himself but for his employees. He encourages employees to take time to pursue personal passions, especially family commitments. When many CROs push unending travel, Mr. Doerschuk’s ability to integrate teams with significant experience allows employees to maintain a positive work-life balance.
He also believes in giving back. He is a consistent, passionate supporter and contributor to the efforts of l’Eté du Vin, a self-sustaining, charitable organization that exists solely to raise funds to support the fight against cancer.
Mr. Doerschuk’s father produced relief and development documentaries throughout the Third World, and he was fortunate to travel with him. Having seen first hand the despair, destruction, starvation, and seeming hopelessness across Africa, Central America, and much of Asia, he found it impossible to have not left a piece of his heart and soul with those people and their countries. Up to 70% of the world population lives in these developing countries, with many families living on less than $800 per year.
Mr. Doerschuk is moved to support under-served nations. He is torn that he cannot sufficiently help the many people and countries he has been exposed to. Someday, he would like to take a position as a development country director for a relief organization.

Loyal. Thorough.
Name: Bradley S. Doerschuk
Current position: President, PharmaMed ­Research Inc.
Date and place of birth: Sept. 11, 1973; St. Charles, Ill.
Education: B.A., chemistry, Vanderbilt
First industry-related job: Clinical research scientist, Baxter
Alternative profession: Relief and ­development country ­director for a relief ­organization
Professional associations: DIA, ACRP
Giving back: Third World; Cancer Research
Words to live by: Never give up
Twitter address: @Commodore95
Connected via: Twitter

Terri Clevenger
Terri Clevenger strives to find the right balance
between patient need and industry focus.

Advocating for Patients
Terri Clevenger is a sports junkie, especially baseball.

Terri Clevenger has been at the forefront of communications and patient advocacy for the biopharmaceutical industry for the past 28 years. She has provided her biopharma clients with proprietary road maps that connect them with all vital constituents, including the often-overlooked patient advocacy groups.
Ms. Clevenger has worked with the top PR agencies in the industry and, currently, she is the founder and president of Continuum Health Communications, an integrated healthcare communications firm offering public relations strategy and implementation with an emphasis on connecting through company positioning, targeted outreach, and third-party relationship building.
Patient advocacy has always been at the heart of Ms. Clevenger’s strengths. She strives to find that right balance between patient need and industry focus, working as a conduit who inherently understands, anticipates, and addresses both in a way that benefits all involved.
During her time consulting at Genentech, Ms. Clevenger used communications to establish a clear benefit for both Genentech and breast cancer patient groups during the Herceptin pre-approval access crisis. At the time, patient advocacy in oncology was in its infancy. Most advocates were following the AIDS advocacy model, one that was highly confrontational. Ms. Clevenger worked with the communications team at Genentech to convince all parties of the benefit of partnering, instead of working against each other. Since then, she has continued her work of helping clients successfully mitigate limited drug availability or shortage and other crises by implementing proactive communications and partnership strategies with key advocacy influencers.
One of her biggest career highlights stems from the time she spent helping to create and launch the Cancer Survival Toolbox, a support tool fully funded by Genentech’s BioOncology unit. The award-winning toolkit changed the way cancer survivors received their information and gave them back the communication tools they needed to advocate for themselves.
Ms. Clevenger continues to use communications to bring both life-sciences companies and patient advocates to the table by developing and running successful disease management programs.
In addition to cancer, she has created and successfully implemented educational programs with patient advocates in cardiovascular disease, cystic fibrosis, psoriasis, growth disorders, and neurology, including multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease.
In her free time, Ms. Clevenger is a passionate volunteer for children’s advocacy issues on both a local and national level.

Demanding. Focused.
Name: Terri Clevenger
Current position: Founder and President, Continuum Health Communications LLC
Date and place of birth: March 1961; New York
Education: B.A., biology and sociology, Colby College
First job: Swim instructor and lifeguard at a local pool
First industry-related job: PR, City of Boston
Professional mentors: Janice Brown, Quinn&Johnson BBDO; Dr. Betsy J. Clark, National Social Workers ­Association
Professional associations: BIO; MassBio Colby College Alumni & Friends; Communique: The Healthcare ­Communications Network; Exl Pharma PR & ­Communications Summit Group; Healthcare & Life ­Science Entrepreneurs; Innovative Marketing, PR, Sales, Word-of-Mouth & Buzz Innovators; Network of PR ­Professionals; Public Relations and Communications Professionals; Social Media and Health Care
Awards and honors: PRSA Silver Anvil Film; PRSA Award of Excellence Silver Anvil; Telly Award; Gold Star Award (National Cancer Institute); Women Executives in Public Relations Foundation Award for Social ­Responsibility
Giving back: Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation; Home Within
Words to live by: True success can only come from hard work
Twitter address: @TLCPR and @continuumhealth
Connected via: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook

Mario Martinez II
A Holistic View

At age 30, Mario
Martinez used his
diverse ­background, business acumen,
leadership skills, and proven track record to launch 360 Vantage.

M
ario Martinez II, CEO of 360 Vantage, started from humble beginnings in New York. An early passion for technology drove him to master the Windows platform on his own while still in his teens. His quick learning style and creative approach to solving complex problems quickly parlayed into a technology career starting in a support role at CorNet International, and eventually led to a sales technology management position at Eisai.
During his time at Eisai, Mr. Martinez helped the sales team execute an exponential growth strategy that took the company from 75 commercial employees and a few million in annual revenue to more than 500 commercial employees and more than $1.5 billion in revenue in just five years. While there, he saw first-hand what it took to drive teams to continually improve performance.
After moving up the ranks at Eisai, Mr.?Martinez went on to a management role in sales technology at Medicis. After three years, he knew he was ready to take on the task of starting his own company, and in 2006 at age 30, founded 360 Vantage.
His first client was Medicis, and in only a few short years, he had 15 additional life- sciences clients, 80-plus employees, a development center in India, and a healthy margin that most CEOs would envy.
Mr. Martinez is resourceful, dependable, and flexible. He demands exceptional work from his staff and from himself; he still rolls up his sleeves and gets close to his client’s projects from start to finish.
Mr. Martinez’s goal is to make 360 Vantage’s clients look like rock stars. And he does this with a focused philosophy: the No. 1 priority is to provide high value to every client, and earn the customer’s trust by bringing innovative solutions to every challenge.
Mr. Martinez provides that same passion and commitment to his pursuits outside the company as well. He enjoys sharing his success and gives back to his community. Today, he and his team generously donate their time and resources to ICAN of Chandler, Ariz., a nonprofit organization focused on helping at-risk youth and their families.
In addition, Mr. Martinez donates his time and resources to an orphanage in India near the 360 Vantage development center, and makes it a point to visit the children on every trip overseas.

Driven. Fast-paced.
Name: Mario Martinez II
Current position: Founder and CEO, 360 Vantage
Date and place of birth: March 1976; New York
First job: DJ
First industry-related job: CorNet International
Alternative profession: Politics to make a difference from within
Professional mentors: Lonnel Coats, Eisai
Professional associations: AZBio Association; AZ TechCouncil; ICAN
Awards and honors: AZBio FastLane
Giving back: ICAN
Words to live by: Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get.
Twitter address: @360ceo; @360vantage
Connected via: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+

Mario Martinez hosted a college radio show.

Dr. Yuichi Iwaki
A Global Conduit

From Asia to the United States, Yuichi Iwaki, M.D., Ph.D., provides an important conduit for the development of Japanese therapeutics in the United States.
Dr. Iwaki is considered to be an icon in the global medical world. He founded MediciNova in September 2000, with $10 million in seed funding from Tanabe Seiyaku Co., with the goal to build a strong product portfolio through alliances with North American, European, and Japanese biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. The San Diego-based biopharma company is focused on acquiring and accelerating the global development and commercialization of innovative pharmaceutical products.
In Japan and the United States, he is recognized for his ability to identify early on significant opportunities in healthcare and turn them into important advancements in the practice of medicine.
MediciNova licensed its first development candidates in 2002, and in 2004 the company licensed four more development candidates. In February 2005, MediciNova became the first U.S. company to be publicly traded in Japan, raising $113.2 million on the Osaka Securities Exchange. In December 2006, MediciNova listed on the NASDAQ Global Market under the ticker symbol MNOV.
Through his years as a transplant specialist, Dr. Iwaki was exposed to the U.S. and European pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. His first foray into the industry was advising investment funds on interesting and novel medications that could be used for unmet medical needs. He eventually broadened his scope and began advising Japanese pharmaceuticals and biotech investors on which biotech companies to invest in based on his expert review of their new medicines. It eventually became clear to Dr. Iwaki that drug development would be the best way for him to use his skills to help the most patients, rather than one patient at a time as a surgeon.
Through this work, Dr. Iwaki recognized that big Japanese pharmaceuticals were partnering with major Western pharmaceuticals. But, he realized that the smaller Japanese pharmaceutical companies with early- to mid-stage therapeutics were not attracting these suitors and needed a better conduit to global markets. He also recognized a demand for global biotech investment in the Japanese financial markets.
Dr. Iwaki’s innovative business model focuses on novel compounds that have a strong preclinical package, address a large market need in the United States, and will have an immediate impact on patient outcomes and, importantly, on healthcare costs. He has always been driven by an intense desire to shrink the global medical community and share knowledge and expertise by bringing medical breakthroughs to patients throughout the world.

Dr. Yuichi Iwaki was born in Hakodate, Japan.

Dr. Yuichi Iwaki founded ­MediciNova
using his strong ­connections within the ­Japanese ­biopharmaceutical industry.

Honest. Straight-Forward.
Name: Yuichi Iwaki, M.D., Ph.D.
Current position: President and CEO, Founder, MediciNova Inc.
Date and place of birth: Sept. 17, 1949; Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan
Education: M.D., Sapporo Medical School
First job: Assistant professor, UCLA
First industry-related job: MediciNova
Alternative profession: Pediatrician
Professional mentors: Nobutada Saji, Suntory; Akira Mori, Mori Trust
Words to live by: Let’s smile

Alexis
Borisy
A Biotech
Entrepreneur
on a Mission

Alexis Borisy has founded five biotech ­companies — CombinatoRx, Forma ­Therapeutics, Foundation Medicine,­ ­Blueprint Medicines, and Warp Drive Bio.
A forward-thinker and biotechnology entrepreneur, Alexis Borisy has the ­ability to generate great ideas,
identify new technologies and
determine where to apply them for
the benefit of market need.

Alexis Borisy is a successful biotechnology entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience building and operating innovative science-based organizations.
Mr. Borisy joined the life-sciences venture capital firm Third Rock Ventures in 2009 to focus on the formation, development, and strategy of new companies. He co-founded Foundation Medicine and served as the company’s interim CEO through May 2011; he then co-founded Blueprint Medicines, and launched and is serving as interim CEO of Warp Drive Bio.
Warp Drive Bio is driving the reemergence of natural products in the era of genomics to create breakthrough treatments that make an important difference in the lives of patients.
Built upon the belief that nature is the world’s most powerful medicinal chemist, Warp Drive Bio is deploying a battery of state-of-the-art technologies to access powerful drugs that are now hidden within microbes.
Launched in 2011 through a groundbreaking strategic partnership with Sanofi and with financing from Third Rock Ventures and Greylock Partners, the company was founded by renowned scientist Dr. Gregory Verdine, along with Dr. George Church and Dr. James Wells.
Before joining Third Rock Ventures, Mr. Borisy founded CombinatoRx in 2000, serving as its CEO and taking the company public on the NASDAQ.
He has raised more than $1 billion in financing and business development deals, and has authored numerous scientific papers and patents.
Mr. Borisy’s vision of what he, together with other Foundation Medicine founders, Eric Lander, Ph.D., Matthew Meyerson, M.D., Ph.D., Todd Golub, M.D., and Levi Garraway, M.D., Ph.D., wanted to do was inspiring enough to draw top-level executives to round out the company’s C-Suite. Mr. Borisy currently serves as chairman of Foundation Medicine, a cancer diagnostics company at the forefront of bringing comprehensive genomic analysis to routine cancer care.
Mr. Borisy’s unique ability to translate complex new ideas into elegant solutions has had an impact on many people. Though the ideas may not always be successful, they push people to think and work toward important new approaches.
Additionally, his passion for personalized medicine, more targeted therapies, and more efficient and rational drug design can be seen in many biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies and pursuits today.
Mr. Borisy has a gift for seeing opportunities, as well as bottlenecks and challenges, that others have not yet begun to realize. He is extremely well-connected and respected at various levels within the life-sciences industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and the academic medical center world.
He has also taken a leap into the technology world to find ideas that have not yet been applied to the life sciences. Mr. Borisy’s coupling of new ideas with traditional processes in new industries has had a very important influence on many colleagues, companies, and organizations. He is a true inspiration through his intellectual curiosity, passion for science, and drive to improve the lives of patients.
Mr. Borisy is an intelligent, ethical, and honest leader who wants to see everything done the right way. His family, whom he values so much, is also at the top of his list of meaningful accomplishments.
Trained in chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard where he was a Howard Hughes Predoctoral Fellow, Mr. Borisy was honored as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Technology Review Innovator of the Year. He was also chosen as the New England Entrepreneur of the Year in Life Sciences and was honored as a Presidential Scholar.

Passionate. Visionary.
Name: Alexis Borisy
Current position: Interim CEO, Warp Drive Bio; Partner, Third Rock Ventures
Date and place of birth: December 1971; ­Madison, Wisc.
Education: B.S. chemistry, University of Chicago;­ ­Masters, chemistry and chemical ­biology, Harvard ­University
First job: Selling peanuts at Wisconsin Badger football games at14
First industry-related job: College intern, Nicolet ­Scientific Instruments
Giving back: Museum of Science in Boston

Darlene Panzitta
Darlene Panzitta is a champion for small
biopharmaceutical companies that don’t have the resources to run their own clinical ­studies.

Resolute. Curious.
Name: Darlene Panzitta
Current position: President and Founder, DSP Clinical ­Research LLC
Date and place of birth: Jan. 13, 1970; New Jersey
Education: B.S.; M.S
First job: Clerical assistant, Numerax
First industry-related job: Clinical information ­coordinator, drug safety, Organon
Alternative profession: Ice cream shop owner
Professional mentors: The six members of her ­entrepreneurs’ group; clients; colleagues
Professional associations: ACRP; the New Jersey ­Entrepreneurs Organization
Awards and honors: 50 fastest growing woman-owned or led private companies in the U.S. by the Women Presidents Organization and American Express OPEN; Ernst & Young’s Winning Women Entrepreneur Award; New Jersey ­Business Top 40 under 40; a finalist in the New Jersey Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award
Giving back: Animal rescue
Words to live by: Get out of my way
Connected via: LinkedIn, Facebook

Champion of Small Pharma
Darlene Panzitta wanted to be a cartoon artist because she loved drawing/sketching, and won the Halloween drawing ­contests every year in grammar school.

With a realization that there was a huge untapped market of small- to midsize pharmaceutical companies that were being neglected by large CROs, Darlene Panzitta created a business out of a niche market.
Ms. Panzitta is a champion for small biopharmaceutical companies that don’t have the resources to run their own clinical studies. Since founding DSP Clinical in1999, she has been showing other small CROs how to thrive by focusing like a laser on controlling study costs, offering one-stop shopping for every area of outsourced clinical trial management, and creating a team that is so service-oriented they sometimes spend more time at customers’ offices than their own.
She never takes her eye off the ball and always wants to know what’s next.
It really all started when Ms. Panzitta got her first monitoring job. She says it was a true accomplishment as no one would give her a chance without experience, and when she finally got her first job, she was beyond happy.
The toughest part of her career has been the massive amount of traveling it entailed. In fact, she traveled so much she couldn’t keep the cities straight and often forgot the city she was staying in.
When she started in the CRO business so few people took her seriously, but the ones who did made a huge difference; they gave her advice and a chance to run her first clinical trials. Their advice and confidence in her ability were critical to the young entrepreneur just starting a business in a very competitive market.
Now she is in a position to mentor people at DSP and at other companies and paying it forward feels great.
Next on her list of goals is to be asked to join a board of directors so she can share her business advice, which is as valuable as her scientific advice.

Name: Darlene Panzitta
Current position: President and Founder, DSP Clinical ­Research LLC
Date and place of birth: Jan. 13, 1970; New Jersey
Education: B.S.; M.S
First job: Clerical assistant, Numerax
First industry-related job: Clinical information ­coordinator, drug safety, Organon
Alternative profession: Ice cream shop owner
Professional mentors: The six members of her ­entrepreneurs’ group; clients; colleagues
Professional associations: ACRP; the New Jersey ­Entrepreneurs Organization
Awards and honors: 50 fastest growing woman-owned or led private companies in the U.S. by the Women Presidents Organization and American Express OPEN; Ernst & Young’s Winning Women Entrepreneur Award; New Jersey ­Business Top 40 under 40; a finalist in the New Jersey Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award
Giving back: Animal rescue
Words to live by: Get out of my way
Connected via: LinkedIn, Facebook

Allison Kalloo
Diversity Recruitment
Allison Kalloo loves jazz standards, and occasionally sings in public.

Through Clinical Ambassador, Allison Kalloo is striving to transform the research industry by ­demanding ­transparency and deliberate minority participation.

Allison Kalloo is an entrepreneur who is unwavering in her vision to provide clinical, community, and creative interventions to populations and clinical studies that traditionally experience disparities.
Clinical Ambassador, which was founded in 2011 by Ms. Kalloo, is becoming known for its progressive minority inclusion services in medical research, providing customizable clinical solutions and unprecedented reach that will result in broader access to life-saving treatments for those who ultimately need them most. What Clinical Ambassador means for the industry is a reliable, relatable partner that can do the heavy lifting in minority patient recruitment.
The company’s distinction in the marketplace is being people-focused. Where other  patient recruitment agencies, CROs, and outsource professionals provide technical assistance, Clinical Ambassador’s vision is to specialize in the art of communication by becoming cultural brokers, creatives, and architects of trust. The company looks to explore all possible avenues to communicate how life-altering and exciting medical discovery really is, and to facilitate the industry’s realization of its broader destiny.
Clinical Ambassador serves as the only industry-community intermediary of its kind in the marketplace. Under Ms. Kalloo’s guidance, employees care deeply about providing tangible solutions to disparate minority populations as well as to broader audiences.
Ms. Kalloo developed the business model to not only identify gaps, but to source the solutions to them. Tired of describing, discussing, and bemoaning the chasm she saw, she went into action and formed a company that has become a rare intermediary that can translate bold ideas into transformative strategies that can change the industry.
She helps clients close their diversity gaps — touching studies, staffing, and special populations and allowing them to compete in nontraditional areas.
Clinical Ambassador’s primary line of business is marketing communications and recruitment creative, hand-in-hand with community outreach and discovery-focused events. The company’s secondary line of business is consulting in cultural competence, providing both training and trained personnel.
Through Ms. Kalloo’s extensive network, clients have the opportunity to interact with minority participants on specific studies, specific events, or specific times on their study timeline as diversity agents. This includes developing and delivering informed consent on plain language forms, verbally, and/or using multimedia.
Ms. Kalloo says the demand for the industry to bring new and customized products to the market — especially in the context of personalized medicine in an increasingly “browner" global world — will expand exponentially. Being a trusted partner in the marketplace positions her company to not only grow along with its clients, but to invite more engaged stakeholders to the table, and to even help set that table.
Clinical Ambassador provides the human touch. Employees interact directly with underrepresented African American, Native American, Afro-Caribbean, Hispanic, and Asian communities. Under Ms. Kalloo’s tutelage, patient navigators are trained to work as members of the investigative team.
Looking ahead, Ms. Kalloo sees the significance in exporting Clinical Ambassador’s unique services overseas.
She believes great communication is at the heart of any solid relationship, and always boils down to how well people can relate to others despite their differences. Whether in Durham, N.C., or Durban, South Africa, being able to communicate well with critical volunteers sidesteps the biggest potential snafus in the pipeline.
The biggest challenge to minority inclusion now, she maintains, is less the fear and reluctance of minorities to participate, but often a fear of industry to make an attempt. She says that the time is now, and the bridge has now been constructed.
Ms. Kalloo points out that the public’s perception of the industry will reflect how well it rises to this challenge of investing in transparent, culturally competent patient engagement.

Creative. Inspired.
Name: Allison Kalloo
Current position: Founder and CEO, Clinical Ambassador LLC
place of birth: Durham, N.C.
Education: B.S., cum laude, North Carolina ­Central ­University; MPH, Yale School
of Public Health
First job: Design specialist, home improvement store
First industry-related job: Health ­communication specialist with NCI’s cancer ­information hotline
Alternative profession: Architect
Professional mentor: College advisor, who is now director of the National Institute on ­Minority Health and Health Disparities
Professional associations: NC Community Health Leadership Roundtable; founder of ­Minority Patient Recruitment on LinkedIn
Awards and honors: Durham Chamber of Commerce’s inaugural Startup Stampede, ­nominated for Entrepreneur of the Year
Giving back: HIV/AIDS prevention and care
Words to live by: Function in disaster, finish in style; knowing is not enough; we must apply; willing is not enough; we must do — Goethe
Twitter address: @clnclambassador
Connected via: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, lssuu.com

Dr. Laura
Shawver
Dr. Laura Shawver spent a month in a small town in Colombia mostly repainting a church.

CEO Activist
Dr. Laura Shawver is a pharmaceutical industry executive, who, through her nonprofit organization The Clearity ­Foundation, is ­developing key partnerships to make sure
that ovarian cancer gets the attention it deserves.

Laura Shawver, Ph.D., is an experienced biotech executive with more than 20 years of experience in the development of small molecule drugs for cancer and other serious diseases. Dr. Shawver joined Cleave Biosciences as CEO in September 2011 after serving as Entrepreneur in Residence for 5AM Ventures from October 2010. From 2002 to 2010, Dr. Shawver was the CEO of Phenomix Corp., where she also served on the board of directors. Before Phenomix, Dr. Shawver was with Sugen.
Six years ago, a crisis sparked a new direction for Dr. Shawver, one that she has embarked upon with the same passion and drive as her work in the biopharmaceutical industry. After fighting the war on cancer for more than 20 years from the research bench and C-suite, Dr. Shawver was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She quickly learned that the scientific innovations that were being applied to improve the treatment of other cancers were not benefiting patients with ovarian cancer. In fact, she found little had changed in more than 40 years for women with ovarian tumors. Dr. Shawver found that the options for herself and the more than 21,000 other U.S. women diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year are extremely limited. Harking back to the 1990s when she and her colleagues at Sugen studied the biology of cancer and its signaling pathways, Dr. Shawver knew molecular profiling reveals what makes each patient’s cancer unique.
Driven by the desire to provide the benefits of molecular profiling to any ovarian cancer patient who seeks it, Dr. Shawver established the Clearity Foundation as the only nonprofit organization to offer access to diagnostic services that profile patients’ tumors without cost to the patient to help prioritize treatment choices for recurrent disease. In this way, the Clearity Foundation’s model differs from other patient advocacy organizations that focus on disease awareness, early detection, and education. The foundation provides access to qualified laboratories that conduct the tumor analysis and pays for the tests to be performed if the patient’s insurance does not cover the costs.  The foundation also keeps a database to aid in the interpretation of the results and track the patient over time.
To date, The Clearity Foundation has impacted the treatment of more than 250 women through guidance and the services that Clearity provides. Dr. Shawver has even inspired some patients to start their own fundraisers to support fellow ovarian cancer patients.
She is committed to increasing physicians’ awareness about how they can make choices amongst treatment options for ovarian cancer through molecular profiling.
No one should be content with a one-size-fits-all approach and everyone should demand or create viable strategies that stack the cards in the favor of the patients. To be successful, Dr. Shawver also says patients should demand to know why a treatment is right for them, and clinicians should recommend clinical trials even if they are not at their institution.
Dr. Shawver counts herself lucky to have recently celebrated her five-year mark for remission following surgery and chemotherapy.
Many ovarian cancer survivors are grateful to Dr. Shawver and inspired by her perseverance and optimism that a cure specific to each person is out there. Dr. Shawver has not only helped hundreds of women, but motivates the people she has helped to make a difference as well.
In the biotechnology business, Dr. Shawver says one has to adapt quickly to the changing landscape and be flexible in their thinking. As CEO of Cleave Biosciences, Dr. Shawver and her team are working on novel targets for difficult-to-treat cancers.
A major problem for many patients is lack of a durable response to standard-of-care agents. Drugs are needed that, while targeted, can attack a tumor cell at multiple points and can be combined with standard of care so that more people have a chance for a cure.
Dr. Shawver says scientists have to become smarter to identify which patients have the best chance to benefit from the drugs being created.

Flexible. Adaptable.
Name: Laura K. Shawver, Ph.D.
Current position: CEO, Cleave Biosciences Inc.
Date and place of birth: June 14, 1957; Davenport, Iowa
Education: B.S., University of Iowa; Ph.D., University of Iowa
First industry-related job: Triton Biosciences
Professional associations: The Clearity Foundation; American Association for Cancer Research (AACR); American Society of Clinical Oncologists (ASCO)
Giving back: The Clearity Foundation
Words to live by: May I be at peace, may I be healed, may I be a source of healing to others — Tibetan prayer

Dr. Tobias Ritter
A Chemical Reaction

Despite his young age and six short years in the Harvard chemistry department, Tobias Ritter, Ph.D., has achieved rock-star status in the chemistry world by developing and publishing breakthrough achievements in fluorination chemistry that have the potential to significantly advance drug discovery and development.
Dr. Ritter is the cofounder of SciFluor and serves as its chief scientific advisor. He is also currently an associate professor in the department of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University.
Fluorine can significantly alter and often improve the properties of drugs, but introducing fluorine into small molecules is challenging due to the fundamental properties of the element fluorine.
Dr. Ritter has developed a series of reactions that can now be used to expediently make new drug candidates and that enable the synthesis of tracer molecules for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging. The fluorination methods led to the launch of SciFluor Life Sciences in 2011. Now, SciFluor is harnessing the transformational power of fluorine to enrich pipelines, optimize drug discovery and ultimately, deliver more innovative drugs to patients.
In 2011, three of the top 10 best-selling drugs, and seven of 35 newly approved drugs contained fluorine.
Dr. Ritter has won more than 15 prestigious industry and academic awards in the last five years, including being named by Popular Science in 2011 as one of its Brilliant 10 and the AstraZeneca Excellence in Science Award in 2010 for his work in developing fluorinated molecules that could make drugs for depression and cancer better at attaching to their targets.
Before joining the Harvard chemistry department in 2006, he completed his post-doctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology.
Dr. Ritter is a frequently invited lecturer, and has authored 40 scientific publications.

Through development of new chemical reactivity, Dr. Tobias Ritter and his team have enabled ­access to new ­fluorinated molecules that can serve as new drug candidates.
Dr. Tobias Ritter was honored with Popular Science’s Brilliant 10 award in 2011.

Tenacious. Brilliant.
Name: Tobias Ritter, Ph.D.
Current position: Cofounder and Chief Scientific ­Advisor, SciFluor Life Sciences; Associate Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University
Date and place of birth: January 1975; Lubeck, Germany
Education: B.S., M.S., Ph.D., TU Braunschweig, Germany, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
First job: Postdoc Caltech
First industry-related job: Assistant Professor, Harvard University
Awards and honors: Popular Science Brilliant 10 award; BASF Catalysis Award; AstraZeneca Excellence in Science Award; Amgen Young Investigator Award; Eli Lilly
Grantee Award; Bayer Early Excellence in Science
Award; ­Massachusetts Life Science Center Young
Investigator Award; Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award

Betsy Brown
A Resourcing Expert

Betsy Brown has been an industry ­entrepreneur, leader, and game changer for her entire career ­spanning almost 25 years.
Betsy Brown was a ­cheerleader in high school.

An industry leader, Betsy Brown is well-known not only in her hometown of Research Triangle Park, N.C., but throughout the world, as she is continually called upon to share her wealth of expertise and opinions.
Ms. Brown has been providing inspiration for more than 25 years to many in the clinical research industry.
She began her career in the early CRO days working for ClinTrials Research. During that time, she recognized a need for resources that could provide clinical expertise to either execute clinical studies or fulfill the need for supplemental staff. To that end, she cofounded the Woolf Group in 1995, and then went on to cofound Trio Clinical Research, an Aptiv Solutions company, in 2002.
With Trio, Ms. Brown expanded upon the provision of incorporating resourcing staff into CRO infrastructure and services. Both the Woolf Group and Trio were awarded Fast 50 Awards in the Research Triangle Park area.
Mr. Brown is an innovator in the area of clinical research. She has set new standards in answering the questions of “what is a client?" and “what is good customer service?"
She has the ability to bring together people of varied backgrounds and form teams that provide excellent customer service to both internal and external clients.
Ms. Brown is well-known and respected for her expertise in career development for clinical research professionals. She continues to motivate and inspire those around her.
Ms. Brown’s team members say she embodies the powerful combination of a strategic thinker, able to forecast industry trends, and an inspirational leader who is able to motivate others to work along side her — a combination that is a rare trait among top-level leaders.
Ms. Brown is also generous with her time outside of the office. She is actively involved with Backpack Buddies, an organization that makes sure kids in need have food over the weekends and summer when school is not in session.
At press time, Ms. Brown stepped down as president of Trio, and will be starting a new chapter in her storied career.

Energetic. Tenacious.
Name: Betsy Brown
Current position: President, Trio Clinical Resourcing, an Aptiv Solutions company
Date and place of birth: July 1958; Pittsburgh, Pa.
Education: M.A., Social Psychology, University of ­Virginia
First job: Travel agent
First industry-related job: CRA
Alternative profession: Own a winery
Professional associations: DIA, ACRP
Awards and honors: Fast 50; PharmaVOICE 100
Giving back: Backpack Buddies
Connected via: LinkedIn, Facebook

Wendy
White
A Rare Leader

Wendy White’s commitment to patients with rare diseases and raising awareness in the industry ­
has helped hundreds of thousands of previously
forgotten patients and their caregivers not only
get answers, but convince the powers that be
in the healthcare industry that they deserve ­attention too.

Wendy White can play the
bassoon and was awarded a music scholarship for college.

Optimistic. Curious.
Name: Winifred Shoults White
Current position: Founder and President, Siren ­Interactive Corp.
Date and place of birth: May 1962; New York
Education: B.S., quantitative methods, Indiana ­University College of Business
First job: Hostess, Wendy’s restaurant
First industry-related job: Siren Interactive
Alternative profession: Anthropology
Professional mentors: Mary Pittman, Public Health Institute; Rita Dragonette; Cathy Sohn; Vistage coaches and members
Professional associations: National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD); Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association (HBA)
Awards and honors: Inc. magazine’s 500|5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in America — three years in a row; Rx Club Award of Excellence; ­Hermes ­Creative Gold Award; WebAward; Platinum MarCom Award
Giving back: National Organization for Rare Disorders
Words to live by: To whom much is given, much is ­expected
Twitter address: @Sirenwendy
Connected via: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook

Wendy White’s career trajectory took a dramatic turn 10 years ago when she became the mother of a child with a rare disorder.
Already a successful entrepreneur of a small technology company focused on healthcare and digital marketing, Ms. White understood that the industry was not effectively meeting the needs of the caregivers and patients affected by rare diseases. But she didn’t realize how big the gap was until she started to look for answers to the medical challenges her youngest child and daughter was facing. She ultimately came to recognize that innovation happens at the margins through patients and caregivers pushing for the development of rare disorder therapies. Today, her daughter Casey, is a thriving 10 year old and burgeoning entrepreneur herself.
Realizing she had the power to make a difference, Ms. White completely refocused her company to be exclusively centered on rare disorder therapies. She essentially created a niche market, which has now attracted others. Her vision and passion for the rare disease space are apparent in everything she does.
She is a nationally recognized thought leader, a member of the board of directors of NORD, author, and successful businesswoman in orphan drug/rare disease therapeutics, patient-centric communications, and innovative relationship marketing.
Ms. White recently collaborated with 12 fellow rare disease caregivers to co-author and publish the book: Uncommon Challenges; Shared Journeys: Stories of Love, Hope, and Community by Rare Disease Caregivers. Ms. White says this collaboration was a career highlight. The book features 13 stories that provide a window into the lives of caregivers and patients battling rare diseases, revealing how each unique journey is also a shared journey. All profits from the book are being distributed among the rare disease groups affiliated with the book’s authors.
Ms. White is a sought-after speaker, who has been invited to present a various conferences, including The Economist Pharma Summit 2012 in London and Pfizer’s Rare Disease Summit.
Ms. White is also known for her commitment to women’s leadership development. She is a past president of the Chicago chapter of the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association and serves on HBA’s global board of directors and executive committee.
She serves as a great role model for the entire company of digital marketing experts by encouraging her team to be authentic, compassionate, and dedicated while constantly learning.
Ms. White has led the creation of a work environment that is collaborative, innovative, and worker-friendly.

Lee Segal
The Wunderkind

Visionary. Tenacious.
Name: Leerom Segal
Current position: President and CEO, Klick Health
Date and place of birth: April 1979; Tel Aviv, ­Israel
First job: Byte Doctors, a company he founded when he was 12
First industry-related job: CTO, Motion Works Group
Alternative profession: Proteomics ­Researcher to work on cutting-edge research
Professional mentors: His father; his
partners at Klick, Peter Cordy and Aaron ­Goldstein
Professional associations: Clinton Global ­Initiative; Young President’s Organization; TEDMed; TED Global; the World Economic Forum
Awards and honors: Best Website Silver award; eHealthcare Gold award; Eye for Pharma Digital Award, Best Consumer Website and Best Digital Campaign; Pharma Choice Gold Medal, Best Digital Self Promotion; ­Deloitte Fast 50; Deloitte Fast 500; Business Development Bank of Canada’s Young ­Entrepreneur Award; Ernst and Young, Young Entrepreneur of the Year
Giving back: Artbound; Brazilian Ball; White Knight

In 1997, at the age of 17, Lee Segal cofounded and became CEO of Klick;
today Klick is a highly respected, world-class digital agency.
Lee Segal started his first ­company at 12.

Don’t confuse Lee Segal’s youth with inexperience. This brilliant, insightful, and visionary leader started his first company at age 12, sold his first business at age 14, and was the chief technology officer of the publicly traded Motion Works Group by age 16. At age 17, Mr. Segal co-founded Klick, which has grown consistently and profitably for more than 14 years.
He is taking his adopted hometown of Toronto by storm, and drawing people from around the world to join him as he brings innovation to the digital healthcare arena.
Klick has been continually recognized as one of Canada’s 50 best managed companies, 50 best employers, and 50 fastest growing tech companies. Klick is a Barnham top 10 healthcare IT company and was most recently named by the World Economic Forum as a global growth company to watch.
Never content with the status quo, Mr. Segal is continuously pushing the technology envelope to improve the delivery and communication of healthcare information.
Since the company’s inception, Mr. Segal and his team have been obsessed with shaping the future of digital health so they can give their clients a competitive edge.
He set out to take a totally new approach, armed with the belief that a new breed of agency was needed to deliver an edge in a complex digital world. An approach that put the orchestration of people, data, and technology at the core of the organization. Today, Klick Health is among the largest independent digital health agencies in the world. Mr. Segal attributes the company’s success to having the guts to do things differently, by eliminating silos, and by saying no to the old agency model.
Mr. Segal says the process of innovation and shaping what’s possible doesn’t come with a blueprint, therefore it’s imperative to remain totally committed to the vision and push through the hurdles that invariably arise.
His colleagues, teams, peers, and clients admire his ability to remain true to his convictions, while maintaining agility and resisting insane pressures to conform.
Mr. Segal is a recognized authority on digital marketing in health and mHealth. He is a regular contributor to major publications, has chaired various digital health conferences, and is a board member of the Digital Health Coalition.
Klick is widely credited with bringing awareness to the e-patient movement by showcasing individuals such as ePatient Dave and Charity Tillemann-Dick well before anybody in pharma had taken notice. Most recently, Klick spearheaded the development of a Digital Patient Bill of Rights. (For more information, visit klick.com/pharma/blog
/2011/09/epatient-bill-of-rights/).
Mr. Segal has created a workplace atmosphere that allows his company of 200-plus employees to be innovative, think outside the box, and have fun.
And, yes, fun is a crucial part of Mr. Segal’s leadership style and outlook. In fact, he says the most interesting place he has ever visited is Bhutan, a country that deliberately measures its GNH or gross national happiness.
Mr. Segal fully embraces life, whether it’s an opportunity to give back to the community through the Klick Foundation or engaging in extreme sports, such as climbing Mount Everest.
One of his most innovative philanthropic contributions is the Klick it Forward program he established in 2010. This unique program rewards hard-working employees with money to donate to the charities of their choice, including Plan Canada’s Gifts of Hope, Kiva, Less Carbon Credits, and the I’m Too Young for This! Cancer Foundation. So far, through this initiative, in-kind donations, and employee support, Klick has been able to donate more than $1.4 million.
This engaging, provocative, and passionate leader is pushing technology beyond what is imaginable and Mr. Segal is doing it all with the goal to help patients discover life-saving therapies.

BOOK

Future15
Sponsored by Klick Health
www.klick.com/future15

Kabir Shahani
Kabir Shahani’s vision is so unique that his young ­company is ­already working with top brands in the ­healthcare vertical.

Going from a $4,000 start-up company to a multimillion dollar healthcare technology company in a matter of a couple years is not small feat. But Appature’s rapid growth is testament, in no small part, to Kabir Shahani’s dedication, leadership, and vision of delivering leading-edge software that provides significant business value while still being easy and fun to use.
Working tireless hours and inspiring employees inside and outside the confines of the office, Mr. Shahani, CEO and cofounder, has played an instrumental role in the company’s growth and the adoption of its product Appature Nexus, a relationship marketing technology platform that provides companies the tools to focus on their target customers, make more informed business decisions, and drive overall revenue while saving money on marketing campaign execution. Appature’s approach and Mr. Shahani’s vision are so unique that the company already works with top brands in the healthcare vertical and achieved profitability its first year.
Mr. Shahani is self-described as optimistic and relentless. He believes if one is not optimistic, the best outcome can never be achieved. He is motivated to unleash the potential in himself and the people around him, and there’s no way to do that without optimism. He can’t imagine any other way to be.
Colleagues say Mr. Shahani is also relentless; he prides himself on keeping a pace that is unrivaled. He has tremendous passion to push through obstacles until he and his team achieve what they set out to do.
Mr. Shahani is a passionate evangelist with extensive experience in identifying market segments and creating strategic partnerships. His strong technology and project management foundation give him an edge in solving complex business problems and enabling technical agility in rapidly evolving industries.
Mr. Shahani is devoted to the community where he lives and works. He is involved with Washington STEM or WA-STEM, a new organization dedicated to increasing kindergarten though 12th grade student readiness in the subjects of science, technology, engineering, and math. He believes that this is a major problem nationally, and it is critical to the growth of the economy and well-being of the U.S.’s youth to be better prepared in these subjects in an increasingly global economy.

Kabir Shahani is a concert violinist; he started training at age 4.
Optimistic. Relentless.
Name: Kabir Shahani
Current position: CEO and Cofounder, Appature
Date and place of birth: October 1982; Dearborn, Ill.
Education: B.S., informatics, University of ­Washington
First job: Technology Consultant, Avanade
First industry-related job: CEO, Appature
Awards and honors: Business Week — Best Young Tech Entrepreneur; Puget Sound Business Journal, Named one of the 40 under 40 Business Leaders; Washington’s Best Place to Work; U.S. Small Business Administration Young Entrepreneur Award
Giving back: Washington STEM; See Your Impact
Words to live by: Wake up every morning and ­compete with yourself to have the best day ever
Twitter address: @kabir
Connected via: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook

Ilyssa Levins
A Natural Born Leader

Ilyssa Levins reads palms, a gift passed down from her psychic grandmother.
Ilyssa Levins creates buzz and pops with ideas that
infuse others with enthusiasm in concentric circles
of influence.

Ilyssa Levins has an innate entrepreneurial spirit. Throughout her career, she has been instrumental in creating and innovating new business opportunities, even when her name wasn’t on the door.
A true visionary, trailblazer, advocate, and strategist, Ms. Levins’ unwavering passion and dedication to supporting healthcare innovation and outcomes have earned her the respect and admiration of her peers and colleagues.
After years 20-plus years working at a top-notch communications agency, she recognized a gap in the industry and being a futuristic thinker, Ms. Levins ventured out on her own in 2008 to pioneer an invaluable new approach to regulatory compliance education for promotional agencies and drug and device companies.
As president and founder of the Center for Communication Compliance, Ms. Levins created the only single-source regulatory compliance training, testing, and consulting company in the world. She developed an online certification process that provides the first set of consistent standards for the industry, and corresponding online courses that make it easy to gain basic regulatory knowledge, all of which are having a profound effect on the industry.
CCC is credited with a number of firsts, including the first time a major agency holding company committed to achieve regulatory training and certification for all of its relevant healthcare communications agencies; the first time regulatory compliance certification became mandatory for agency employment; the first time advertising, promotional medical education, patient relationship marketing, and PR agencies had been certified in regulatory compliance; and the first time a communication agency was certified in European regulatory compliance. It will also be the first time that pharmaceutical companies have made certification testing mandatory for agencies that want to maintain their agency-of-record contract status.
Despite Ms. Levins stature as a C-suite executive, she is always the first to roll-up the sleeves of her vintage designer suits to offer help with a heavy workload and collaborate with her staff members to makes things right for them and for her clients. Mr. Levins enthusiasm, team spirit, and kind heart are an inspiration to everyone.
But this is just the tip of Ms. Levins’ leadership iceberg. She has been a guiding force to women and men throughout the industry for more than two decades. Her warmth, magnetic energy, passion, and unstoppable approach to business have proven to be invaluable to her staff, clients, and peers throughout the years.
She has been likened to a conductor creating a masterpiece. She has an enviable ability to keep a thousand balls in the air at the same time, from overseeing an advisory board of former government officials, to developing regulatory education products that address all the diverse disciplines — advertising, PR, patient relationship marketing, digital, promotional medical education — to instilling loyalty among clients and managing her staff. She redefines what it means to be productive, quick, and visionary.
In meetings, clients are dazzled by the passion that she puts into every engagement. And even if she and her team don’t win the contract, Ms. Levins wins their hearts.
Those who know her well say she has the  most positive, kind, and can-do attitude they have ever encountered. No obstacle is ever too big to overcome, and there is never a crisis that can’t be contained.
Ms. Levins is generous to a fault and is tireless in imparting the leadership lessons she has learned along the way. She openly shares her own real business challenges with women at any level so they gain the courage to take a risk — fueling her role as a change agent in an industry seeking female leadership.
Many in the industry credit Ms. Levins for helping them to define their career paths, find the courage to take on more professional responsibilities, and to always think beyond the obvious. She a passionate leader who is adored by those who work for her and with her. And, as she teaches people to execute superior skills, she also teaches them about themselves because she talks about issues that matter, including personal growth.
Her contributions have been recognized many times, including being named as an HBA Rising Star in 2000. She continues to be a tireless and inspirational HBA volunteer, currently serving in a leadership position as a director-at-large on the HBA corporate board.

Open-Hearted. Futuristic.
Name: Ilyssa Levins
Current position: President and Founder, Center for ­Communication Compliance
Date and place of birth: Dec. 3, 1958; New York
Education: B.S., New York University
First job: Public relations, NY City Taxi Limousine Commission
First industry-related job: Gross Townsend Frank Hoffman (GTFH)
Alternative profession: Ballroom or Flamenco dancer
Professional mentors: Jane Townsend and Alan Gross, founding partners of GTFH
Professional associations: Healthcare Businesswomen’s ­Association; Food and Drug Law Institute; DIA; Regulatory ­Affairs Professionals
Awards and honors: PRSA Silver Anvil Award; Inside PR All Star and No. 1 PR Agency two years in a row; YWCA/NY Women Achiever of the Year; HBA Rising Star, HBA President’s Award
Giving back: Board of New Destiny, Children’s Burn ­Foundation
Words to live by: Keep moving forward
Twitter address: @ILatCCC
Connected via: Facebook, Twitter

Faruk Capan
Creating a Tech-Health Combination
Faruk Capan’s success story exemplifies the American dream. In 1990, after completing his studies in his native Istanbul, Mr. Capan came to the United States to complete a master’s degree in information technology. After doing so, he chose to stay in the states, accepting a position at a pharmaceutical company.
It was during his tenure in pharma, that he realized healthcare education and technology were a perfect pairing. And now, just more than 13 years later, the company he founded in his basement has evolved from a Web development shop to a full-service agency with expertise across the digital marketing spectrum.
In 2011, Intouch Solutions officially reorganized around grassroots growth and committed support to three healthcare-related charities. Although busy as the leader of Intouch, Mr. Capan still makes time for his community and is extremely involved in the Helzberg Entrepreneurial Mentoring Program, inspiring other young entrepreneurs to follow their dreams.
A 2009 PharmaVOICE 100 honoree, Mr. Capan has also been awarded an Ingram’s Forty Under 40 accolade, and in 2011, he was nominated as an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of The Year regional finalist.
Mr. Capan is frequently quoted in industry publications and is widely respected in the industry as an innovator, thought leader, and speaker.
He goes above and beyond to do the right thing to help employees in need, and earn and provide mutual respect.

Getting Personal with
faruk capan
Family: Wife, Elaiza; children Demir, 11; Melisa 14
Hobbies: Soccer; cars; playing tennis
Reading list: The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni
Favorite book: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Favorite movie: Scent of a Woman
Bucket list: Travel
Favorite smartphone app: Viber
Life lessons: Make sure you have experience in what you invest.
Most unusual place visited: Phi Phi Islands, Thailand

Faruk Capan makes time for his ­community and is involved in the Helzberg ­Entrepreneurial Mentoring Program, ­inspiring other young ­visionaries to follow their dreams.

Dr. Kevin Lustig
Limitless Energy

Six years ago, Kevin Lustig, Ph.D., realized that pharmaceutical discovery research was becoming increasingly dispersed. He teamed up with two former colleagues to create Assay Depot’s innovative Research Exchange network, which has since become one of the world’s largest cloud-based marketplaces for research services. The Research Exchange network now includes three of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, a free public exchange with users in 53 countries, and more than 900 global research vendors.
Dr. Lustig has a track record of founding companies with the goal of transforming how drug research is done. In 2001, he founded and ran R&D at Kalypsys Inc., a 100-person fully integrated drug discovery company that raised more than $170 million in venture funding and put multiple drug candidates into human clinical trials.
Even then he was convinced that drug discovery could be done much more efficiently than it was being done by the pharma industry, a theme that carries over to Assay Depot today.
In addition to his entrepreneurial nature, Dr. Lustig has more than 15 years of experience working at the lab bench. He directed lead discovery at Tularik, a biopharmaceutical company purchased by Amgen in 2004 for $2 billion.
His research discoveries have been published in Science magazine and other leading scientific journals, and he has been awarded technology patents in multiple scientific areas. While a graduate student at UCSF in 1991, he cloned the first member of a gene family (purinergic receptors) that has turned out to include several important drug discovery targets.
While working at Harvard Medical School in 1997, he discovered a gene that is involved in the formation of a structure that ultimately forms the posterior end of the frog digestive system. He jokes that some are lucky enough to clone the eye gene or the heart gene, but he cloned the ass gene.
A recognized thought leader, this year alone Dr. Lustig has spoken at the World Pharma Innovation Congress in San Francisco and has been invited to speak at six pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. He spoke at the outsourcing best practices conference in Rhode Island in April and at the Start-up Science conference in San Francisco in June. Later this year, he is scheduled to speak at the Open Science Summit in San Francisco.
Dr. Lustig has had his fair share of excitement in the entrepreneurial world. On Dec. 10, 1999, Tularik went public and helped start the biotech bubble of early 2000. Within a few months the stock price had skyrocketed to as high as $99 per share, making many in the company millionaires on paper.  The stock price plummeted to $6 over the next year, and many sold their shares on the way down or not at all, but as he says it was one hell of a ride.

Dr. Kevin Lustig has long been convinced that drug discovery can be done much more efficiently than has been done in the past.

Getting Personal with
dr. kevin lustig

Family: Wife; son, 5; daughter, 3
Hobbies: Citizen Science; surfing; science fiction
Reading list: The 10,000 Year Explosion by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending; The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Favorite book: Evolution by Stephen Baxter
Favorite movie: It’s a Wonderful Life
Bucket list: Trip to Outer Space on Virgin Galactic;
visit to Prehistoric Cave Paintings in Chauvet Cave, France
Favorite smartphone app: StarWalk
Life lessons: Never trouble trouble ‘till trouble ­troubles you — Artie Morgans, his Welsh grandfather
Under the cloak of invisibility: Area 51
Time travel: To the far future to find out whether we made it

Michael Fergusson
From the Ground Up
Aself-made man, Michael Fergusson has the determination to succeed.
He left school and home at age 16 to make his own way in the world, and he has always maintained that the only opportunity deserved is the opportunity created.
It was this belief that compelled him to leave a position as VP of Innovation for a national telecom to form Ayogo in 2008 with business partner Paul Prescod. That came about by a backhanded compliment from a family member: “You’re a terrible employee, you really need to start your own company."
Thus Ayogo became one of the first Vancouver-based companies in the emerging social casual games industry.
One of Mr. Fergusson’s strengths is his ability to foresee trends. Once he discovered that the same concepts that were being used simply to entertain could also be used to build a profitable business that motivates healthy behavior-change, he jumped on it. Ayogo is now a leader in the movement that is using games to change healthcare and improve patient outcomes.
Along the way, Mr. Fergusson made key strategic partnerships with clinicians, leading researchers, and healthcare companies, such as Joslin Diabetes Center (Harvard Medical School), Sanofi-Aventis, the University of Southern California’s Center for Body Computing (Keck School of Medicine), the University of British Columbia’s MAGIC Lab, and the Diabetes Hands Foundation.
Mr. Fergusson says on his way up, he received a lot of help and advice and in return he takes time to speak to entrepreneurs starting out in the high-tech field.
He has organized several scholarship programs at local community colleges and he provides mentoring to college and university students who are entering the workforce and starting up new companies.
For this work, he received the VCC Alumni Association’s Award of Distinction.
Having lost family members to leukemia and brain cancer, Mr. Fergusson contributes to cancer charities, and says one of his proudest moments was watching his mother finish a marathon shortly after her 70th birthday to raise money for blood cancers.
He also regularly contributes to Pivot, a Vancouver charity that provides free legal services to the underprivileged in Vancouver’s downtown east side. Mr. Fergusson is also a board member at DigiBC, the Digital Media and Wireless Association of British Columbia.
Though idealistic, Mr. Fergusson believes that it’s not enough to imagine a better world; one must be willing to work hard and try to make those goals a reality. Ultimately, it is Mr. Fergusson’s commitment to making the world a better place through games and play that makes him a disruptive innovator within the life-sciences industry.

For Michael Fergusson, the only opportunity ­deserved is the ­opportunity created.
Getting Personal with
michael fergusson
Family: Wife, Deborah; children Sasha, 17; Bryn, 14; Tess, 11; Jack, 9
Hobbies: Martial arts
Reading list: Theory of Fun by Raph Koster; Predictably ­Irrational by Dan Ariely; The Trouble with Computers by Thomas Landauer
Favorite movie: The Score
Bucket list: Hike the Andes with his wife and four children
Life lessons: You’re a terrible employee; you need to start your own company

Dr. Yuichi Iwaki  A Transplant Success
Yuichi Iwaki, M.D., Ph.D., founded MediciNova using his strong connections within the Japanese biopharmaceutical industry to partner with midsized Japanese companies to further develop therapeutics with already proven safety data for unmet medical needs in the U.S. and other global markets.
The investigational therapies that Dr. Iwaki has brought to the U.S. for development include MN-221, a targeted therapeutic that may help patients in the emergency department with asthma and COPD exacerbations breathe easier without negative side effects and, most importantly, avoid a costly hospital admission, and MN-166, a glial-attenuation therapy with the multifaceted potential to help patients with multiple sclerosis, neuropathic pain, and drug addiction. Both therapies are in late-stage clinical development in the United States.
Dr. Iwaki is now extending MediciNova’s reach and replicating this business model of developing Japanese compounds in emerging market countries, including China and South American countries.
Dr. Iwaki began his stellar medical career aiming to be a transplant specialist. In the 1970s, he moved from Japan to the United States, and by the late 1980s found himself at the forefront of the new field of organ transplant as a full professor and the head of the transplant research center at the University of Pittsburgh, the “Mecca" of the organ transplant movement. During his stay at the University of Pittsburgh from 1989 to 1991, more than 600 hundred liver transplants were performed by the team.
Dr. Iwaki holds three professorships at the University of Southern California School of Medicine in the Departments of Urology, Surgery, and Pathology and has been Director of the Transplantation Immunology and Immunogenetic Laboratory since 1992. He is also a visiting professor at the Nihon University School of Medicine, Kyushu University, and the Tokyo Women’s Medical School in Japan. Before joining the faculty at the University of Southern California School of Medicine, Dr. Iwaki held professorships at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in the Departments of Surgery and Pathology.

Dr. Yuichi Iwaki began his stellar medical career aiming to be a transplant specialist.
Getting Personal with
dr. yuichi iwaki
Family: Married; four children
Hobbies: Hiking; golfing; playing Go; reading
Reading list: Biographies of U.S. presidents
Favorite book: Aesop’s Fables
Favorite movie: Casablanca
Bucket list: Eat well and sleep well
Favorite smartphone app: The camera
Inspired by: His parents
Life lessons: Be honest
Most unusual place visited: Augusta National ­Country Club
Under the cloak of invisibility: Stay home and relax
Time travel: To the past to the place where his mother and father dated

Darlene Panzitta  CRO Visionary
Darlene Panzitta combines ­business savvy with an ­impressive 16 years of ­experience in drug ­development and clinical trial ­management.

Since Darlene Panzitta founded DSP in 1999, the company has earned a national reputation for excellence in clinical trial management and customer service.
She combines business savvy with an impeccable 16 years of experience in drug development and clinical trial management.
An expert in all facets of early- to late-stage drug development, Ms. Panzitta has a particular focus on local and global study management. Her therapeutic expertise includes women’s health, reproductive endocrinology, urology, pain, CNS, gastrointestinal, gynecology, dermatology, and devices.
She is inspired by her customers who are mostly small companies with small staffs, but are so dedicated to finding new treatments and drugs to treat unmet disease. Ms. Panzitta earns accolades for her vision and focus on serving small clinical study sponsors.
Ms. Panzitta was one of 11 winners recognized nationwide with Ernst & Young’s prestigious 2010 Entrepreneurial Winning Women Award, and was a finalist for its Entrepreneur of The Year Award in New Jersey. She’s been one of NJBIZ’s 40 under 40 winners and has led DSP to increasingly prominent spots on the Inc. 500/5000 for four consecutive years.
She has been published numerous times on best practices in clinical trial outsourcing and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences such as ACRP.

Getting Personal with
darlene panzitta
Family: Husband
Hobbies: Collects refrigerator magnets from the places she travels
Reading list: Biographies
Favorite book: Marley and Me
Favorite movies: Planes, Trains and Automobiles; War of the Roses
Bucket list: To live directly on the beach
Life lessons: Do what you are good at and delegate the things you are not good at
Under the cloak of invisibility: Watch people go about their day
Time travel: To the 1800s to see how people lived

Dr. Marco Chacón  A Paragon of Industry
Highly accredited and respected, Marco Chacón, Ph.D., and the company he founded, Paragon Bioservices, a contract research and manufacturing organization of 75 employees, have become relevant partners to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
Paragon Bioservices, which he founded in 1990, has been repeatedly recognized as a preferred vendor and global supplier by major pharmaceutical companies.
Even among an assortment of inspirational and visionary individuals in the life-sciences industry, Dr. Chacón would stand out as a particularly gifted and dedicated leader.
In addition to growing his company, Dr. Chacón counts employing and mentoring young scientists as one of his biggest accomplishments.
Next on his list is to found a new technology development company and set up a vaccine manufacturing plant in his native Costa Rica.
Dr. Chacón is a member of the board of MdBio, is on several committees for the Tech Council of Maryland, and is a member of the Greater Baltimore Tech Council Biotech Roundtable.
He is also actively involved with the University of Maryland system, spearheading novel public-private initiatives, including one focused on development/manufacturing of stem cell therapies; actively engaging with colleagues at UM Baltimore and with the UM BioPark, and serving on the biotechnology advisory board of UMBC.

Even among an assortment of inspirational and visionary ­individuals in the life sciences industry, Dr. Marco Chacón would stand out as a particularly gifted and dedicated leader.

Getting Personal with
DR. Marco Chacón
Family: Wife, Debbie; daughter, Erica; son, Mark; grandson, Nicholas
Hobbies: Keeping up with international soccer ­tournaments; reading; jogging
Reading list: Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese; Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement ­Threatens Us All by Paul A. Offit, M.D.; Fortune Magazine
Favorite books: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Crime and Punishment by Fyodor ­Dostoevsky
Favorite movies: Dr Zhivago; Young Frankenstein
Bucket list: Getting a Harley; travelling to ­Florence and Rome, Italy; having his own coffee plantation in
Costa Rica
Favorite smartphone app: QR code app
Inspired by: Scientific achievers; entrepreneurs; inventors; artists and visionaries
Life lessons: Treat everyone with the same measure of ­respect and dignity that you would want for yourself
Most unusual place visited: Struthers, Ohio, where he stayed in 1967-68 as a foreign exchange student
Time travel: To the past to Italian Renaissance period

Andrew
Stanger
Digital
For All

Andrew Stanger measures his own success by the success of his clients.
Getting Personal with
andrew stanger

Family: Parents, Marvin and Ethel Stanger; two brothers, Steve and Larry
Hobbies: Watching the Yankees; running; ­museums; going to shows in New York; movies; concerts
Favorite book: The World According to Garp by John Irving
Favorite movie: Batman (1989)
Most unusual place visited: Chapel of Bones in Evora, ­Portugal

Andrew Stanger, an innovator in digital media and marketing, co-founded GenR Media in 2009. Under Mr. Stanger’s guidance, the company offers a suite of programs designed to educate, captivate, and stimulate audiences in the healthcare community, including pharmaceutical companies, medical education agencies, and associations/
institutions.
Having cofounded the company during a significant economic downturn, Mr. Stanger says one of his biggest career highlights occurred when GenR received its first large account five months later.
Mr. Stanger has worked in medical education since 1999, specializing in content delivery through digital media to increase reach and improve healthcare outcomes.
Mr. Stanger has developed successful programs in various therapeutic areas including dry eye, glaucoma, fungal disease, cardiovascular, respiratory, rheumatoid arthritis, oncology, women’s health and hepatitis.
Mr. Stanger’s experience includes the management and implementation of programs in both the Continuing Medical Education and Promotional arenas including satellite symposia, consultant meetings, advisory boards, investigator meetings, CD-ROMs/DVDs, iPad apps, supplements, slide kits, and Web-based programs.
Mr. Stanger is very active in online communities and discussions regarding technology and healthcare, from participating in LinkedIn groups to being followed on Twitter.
He maintains an active and diverse profile in the field. His regular GenR Twitter feed on industry-related news has many followers that count on him to provide the most current and interesting stories in the pharma industry today.
Mr. Stanger has received awards for his work in pharma, including the Telly Awards, Omni Awards, and eHealthcare Leadership awards.
Mr. Stanger graduated Rutgers University with a BS in marketing and a BA in psychology and received his MBA in marketing from Zicklin School of Business, CUNY.

Brad
Doerschuk
Brad Doerschuk ­provides employees with unrivalled ­nurture, support, and compensation.

Start Small,
Think Big

While leading a clinical team at a large pharma company, Brad Doerschuk had an epiphany. Small companies with one or two products — the truly transformational products in medicine — were being underserved. The large CROs were assigning these companies with the least experienced monitors; smaller CROs with higher-level resources to focus on them were fast being acquired by the big guys. But some of these smaller companies — those with the riskiest compounds but the greatest opportunity to advance medicine — had some of the best ideas.
Mr. Doerschuk could see a growing trend in which the best ideas in medicine were being killed at the bench because of poor outsourcing resources. This was the day Mr. Doerschuk determined to even the playing field with a different model. While the average career span of a monitor at a large CRO is 2.5 years, he built an organization of monitors with a minimum of 14 years of experience, and he has dedicated them solely to work on the small to approaching-medium sized companies.
Instead of an army of lower-cost workers, his delta force of professionals is paid a higher wage for their experienced thinking and problem-solving skills. The end result is that fewer than 1% has left a project, query rates are often less than half the average, and sites are more productive and committed.
Today Mr. Doerschuk has supported many successful programs, including the first oncology immunotherapy, but it is the first major project that he successfully managed, Tamiflu, that stands out as a great accomplishment due to the fact he had not managed a registration protocol prior to that point.
As he notes, when developing something that transforms or revolutionizes medicine, the success of each product is individually an awesome and powerful experience.
Mr. Doerschuk believes the biggest challenge facing the industry is overcoming the politics of business, market forces, and big pharma to allow the emergence and opportunity for the revolutionary and transformational ideas that often lie with smaller companies.

Getting Personal with
brad DOERSCHUK
Family: Wife, Jacie; children, Cole, 7; Maren, 5
Hobbies: Extreme adventures, such as skiing; golfing; running, traveling
Favorite book: Everest
Favorite movie: Skiing Everest
Bucket list: Successfully parent his two ­children Cole and Maren, and support and ­enrich his family; climb Mt. Kilamanjarro, ­complete a heli-skiing adventure; visit the southeast Asian islands
Most unusual place visited: Lake Kivu on the border of Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo
Under the cloak of invisibility: Heaven
Time travel: To the past to the Middle East during the time when Jesus Christ was alive to see and ­experience the known and unknown

Dr. Kenneth Tomaszewski
Delivering Progress
Through Change

Dr. Ken Tomaszewski is a ­visionary leader who ­consistently views market complexities as welcomed challenges and works to ­generate innovative ­solutions.

In founding the KJT Group in 2007, Ken Tomaszewski, Ph.D., has brought a higher level of service and thought leadership to life-sciences and healthcare companies needing evidence-based consulting.
In the five years since launching KJT, the insights-based consulting firm has grown to 35 employees and is one of the fastest-growing companies in Rochester, N.Y.
KJT Group today helps major pharmaceutical, medical device, and provider organizations make informed marketing decisions.
Drawing on the concept that there can be “no progress without change, no change without progress," Dr. Tomaszewski has created a consulting powerhouse.
Using his background as a professor at the University of Rochester, he strives to ensure academic quality is brought to all business engagements. Through his leadership, KJT Group was named to Rochester’s Top 100 companies in 2011.
Entrepreneurial by nature, Dr. Tomaszewski tends to see possibilities and acts on them. He has started several businesses from scratch from the age of 18. He started KJT with no cash reserves, personally or for the business, and thus took a huge risk.
Starting a firm from scratch required knowledge of not only the business itself, but of all aspects of the business operations from IT, financials, HR, and so forth. He says the one thing that made it easier were the fantastic colleagues who were in place to support and nurture the business too.
His next goal is to launch a European office of KJT Group.

Getting Personal with
kenneth tomaszewski
Family: Wife, Carol; three sons, 13, 11, 8
Hobbies: Playing music; coaching his son’s baseball teams; chairing the local Cub Scouts; outdoors and shooting sports
Reading list: Communist Manifesto; Common Sense
Favorite book: Benjamin Franklin autobiography
Favorite movie: The Graduate
Bucket list: Visit Mayan ruins and other ancient sites across the globe; see sons married; see grandchildren someday
Inspired by: Anyone who puts others’ interests truly ahead of their own to make a difference.
Life lessons: Don’t just say what is in your head; listen more and talk less.
Most unusual place visited: Grateful Dead concert, Albany, N.Y.
Under the cloak of invisibility: The White House
Time travel: To the future to visit future generations, see his grandchildrens’ grandchildren, and see the world they live in.

Allison Kalloo  Building Cultural Bridges
By developing an ­inside-out ­approach to close cultural gaps, ­Allison Kalloo is ­providing the ­industry with ­unprecedented cultural ­competence.

Through her unique company, Clinical Ambassador, Allison Kalloo is bridging the gap between special populations and the clinical research community.
To achieve the goals of advancing medical discovery and reducing disparities, Ms. Kalloo’s company unites disparate stakeholders through marketing communications, community outreach, and inclusion consulting.
Clinical Ambassador is revolutionizing science through the art of communication. The company motivates engagement by tapping the vested interest of communities of color. Ms. Kalloo and her team employ high-touch feedback mechanisms to expand literacy and create arts-infused communications that special populations respond to. Their creativity is informed by the underrepresented populations themselves, and this inside-out approach closes cultural gaps and provides the industry with unprecedented cultural competence.
She has authored a trio of proprietary Passport booklets — one for industry, one for the general public, and one that is personalized for patients; developed the original WiseTrials protocol assessment tool; and created the i-Que staff training tool to facilitate stronger connections between industry researchers and communities of color.
Next, she is considering both collaborative and investor invitations to boost hiring and secure the company’s destination space for community engagement.
Before founding Clinical Ambassador, Ms. Kalloo worked as a patient recruitment account manager for a marketing agency’s pharma clients and as a marketing communications specialist with a disease management company.
She also spent 15 years in health communications with various government agencies and nonprofit organizations that covered reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, cancer, and chronic diseases disproportionally affecting minority and at-risk populations.
A particularly challenging assignment involved working on a special assignment as TB program director for the City of New Haven. Ms. Kalloo developed an innovative awareness campaign to reach at-risk communities. In addition to being asked to design a message of impact, the challenge was packaging and marketing it for a target audience to whom basic survival was priority No 1. The challenge and ultimate success of that assignment set the stage for her specialty in patient recruitment.
Her efforts have been recognized by her community with the nomination of Durham’s Entrepreneur of the Year and being included in the Durham Chamber of Commerce Startup Stampede in 2011.
HIV/AIDS prevention and cure are near and dear to her because the virus affected her family early in the epidemic. It remains her goal that those infected and affected be treated humanely.

Getting Personal with
Allison Kalloo
Family: Son, Joshua
Hobbies: Hat and handbag design; restoration projects; horseback riding
Reading list: The E Myth; Raving Fans
Favorite book: The Fountainhead
Favorite movie: Scent of a Woman
Bucket list: Publish a series of children’s books; drive through Europe; sing with a big band orchestra; restore her grandfather’s farm; and market her organic green juice concoction
Inspired by: Her mother; Oprah Winfrey; Dr. King; Dalai Lama
Life lessons: Never settle for the path of least resistance
Most unusual place visited: Haiti
Time travel: She would collapse time so that she and her son could play together as children, and again so that her son and mother could spend time together

Mario Martinez
Pursuing Innovation

Mario Martinez II is focused on leading the 360 Vantage team to achieve its mission of building a ­­­
world-class ­technology solutions company.

Atechnology-geek at heart, Mario Martinez II is on a mission: to pursue innovation. He is positioning the company he founded, 360 Vantage, to push the limits of existing sales and marketing technology to design fast, accurate, and easy-to-use applications that can be accessed from anywhere, from the latest devices.
Mr. Martinez launched 360 Vantage after years of building custom CRM applications and managing large-scale sales operations and related IT projects for mid-tier and enterprise life-sciences organizations. Mr. Martinez saw a growing need for business transformation and end-user adoption within the industry, and successfully predicted the emergence of cloud computing and mobile technologies as the most effective change agents in that process.
Since then, the company has become a pioneer in the development of custom CRM and marketing apps developed on Salesforce.com and Force.com, with some of the industry’s first offerings for the iPhone, iPad, and Android.
Mr. Martinez is a member of the ICAN board, where he continues to bring tremendous value to the organization as it helps under-privileged families and at-risk youth.
Mr. Martinez’s commitment to the biotech industry reaches both locally and globally. Last year, 360 Vantage was recognized as an AZBio 2011 Fast Lane Honoree. In March 2012, Mr. Martinez was appointed to the AZBio board of directors, where he will help guide strategic direction of the nonprofit organization. He was also recently nominated to the Arizona Technology Council Board.

Getting Personal with
mario martinez II
Family: Wife, Kelly; son, Jordan, 17; daughter, ­Mercedes, 14
Hobbies: Spending time with family; cars; technology; photography; and trying to master golf
Reading list: Flash Foresight: How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible
Favorite book: Art of War by Sun Tzu
Favorite movies: The Patriot; The Avengers
Bucket list: Auto racing; African safari
Favorite smartphone app: Flipboard
Inspired by: Bill Gates in his second act
Life lessons: Decide what you want and go make it ­happen; anything is possible
Most unusual place visited: Panda park in China
Under the cloak of invisibility: White House
Time travel: To the future to spend time with his family to see what impact they had on society

Betsy Brown
Game Changer

Betsy Brown embodies the powerful ­combination of a strategic thinker and inspirational leader.

For almost 25 years, Betsy Brown has served as an entrepreneur, an industry leader, a mentor, and a source for those who continually seek her out to leverage her experience and opinions. As a resourcing strategist and game changer, she has founded two clinical resourcing companies that collaborate with sponsor clients to find innovative and cost-effective ways to outsource their clinical trials.
She is an inspiring leader providing guidance and mentoring to clinical research professionals to enhance and invest in their careers while improving the industry’s overall workforce and preparing for the future.
Ms. Brown began her career in 1988 at Clinical Research International, one of the very early CROs, which later became ClinTrials Research. Seeing an unmet need for clinical expertise and resources, she cofounded The Woolf Group in 1995, one of few clinical research staffing firms in the country, which quickly became highly respected by its clientele. After selling to a British company, she cofounded Trio Clinical Research in 2002 with a vision to continue the provision of just-in-time clinical resourcing as well as providing additional CRO infrastructure and services requested by her clients.
Both The Woolf Group and Trio were named to the Fast 50 Awards, honoring the 50 fastest-growing private companies in the Research Triangle Park, N.C., area.
Ms. Brown has just stepped out of her role as president of Trio Clinical Resourcing, an Aptiv Solutions company.
She is a member of ACRP and DIA, and regularly speaks at industry conferences and webinars on career development topics designed to advance the clinical research professional and industry at large.

Getting Personal with
Betsy Brown
Family: Husband, Will Stewart; children, Robert, 24; Hunter, 13; Sam, 5
Hobbies: Skiing; exercise; cooking; wine; chasing kids
Reading list: Catherine the Great, Portrait of a Woman by Robert Massie; Because One Day by Tyson Janney
Favorite book: Gone with the Wind
Favorite movie: Gone with the Wind
Bucket list: Take the whole family to Africa on safari
Favorite smartphone app: LinkedIn
Inspired by: Her mother
Life lessons: Always take chances; they usually pay off in the long run. If they don’t, you will have learned something valuable for the next venture.
Most unusual place visited: Portloe, U.K., a small fishing village in Cornwall
Time travel: To the future 50 years to see how the world has changed.

Dr. Tobias Ritter
Rockin’ Chemistry

Dr Tobias Ritter’s ­persistence in ­fluorine ­research has helped him achieve a somewhat legendary status in the ­chemistry world.

Getting Personal with
Dr. Tobias Ritter
Family: Married

Tobias Ritter, Ph.D., has been called a rock star of chemistry. The charismatic chief scientific advisor and co-founder of SciFluor Life Sciences is also an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, where his research group focuses on fluorination chemistry for late-stage functionalization of complex natural and unnatural products and bimetallic transition metal redox catalysis.
His persistence has helped him to tackle and solve some challenging problems in fluorine research. While fluorination of drug molecules is recognized as having the potential to make products more stable, more potent, and more likely to effectively reach and bind to their targets, it is also recognized as one of the more technically difficult areas in modern chemistry. Attachment of fluorine atoms is often unreliable and has the potential to damage the underlying molecules. One good way of attaching fluorines to an organic compound is by using transition metals, and Dr. Ritter has expanded the number of new chemical fluorinated entities that are now available.
Over the course of a year, Dr. Ritter and his team have evaluated more than 1,200 reactions to identify promising chemical reactions. The capabilities are now part of the company he cofounded in 2011.
In addition to making new drugs available in categories such as depression and cancer, the fluorinated molecules can be used to “tag" compounds in PET imaging scans.
This technique attaches a radioactive fluorine isotope to drugs at a late stage of the synthesis, thus allowing scientists to track the molecules’ paths through a patient’s body to determine whether they are achieving the desired effects.
Dr. Ritter received his undergraduate education in Braunschweig, Germany, Bordeaux, France, Lausanne, Switzerland, and Stanford, Calif. He holds a master’s of science degree from Braunschweig University, Germany, and a master’s degree in business administration from Hagen University, Germany. Dr. Ritter received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from ETH Zurich.

Dr. Laura Shawver
CEO with a Cause

Dr. Laura Shawver is not only helping hundreds of women affected by ovarian cancer, she motivates the people she has helped to make a ­difference as well.

Laura Shawver, Ph.D., CEO of Cleave Biosciences, has had a distinguished career in the field of healthcare, and in her additional current role as the founder of The Clearity Foundation she is making a difference to thousands afflicted by ovarian cancer.
Dr. Shawver is a biotechnology industry executive, who, through her nonprofit organization has developed key partnerships with pioneering gene sequencing, companion diagnostics, and pharmaceutical companies to make personalized medicine accessible and to make sure that often-neglected ovarian cancer gets the attention it deserves.
Amid building a successful career in the biotech business, Dr. Shawver was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2006. Shortly after, she founded the Clearity Foundation to help women with recurrent and refractory ovarian cancer prioritize treatment options through molecular profiling.
Molecular profiling generates a blueprint of a tumor, which makes it possible to match drugs that target and destroy a tumor with that particular blueprint. Although the standard drug cocktail for ovarian cancer patients is initially effective, most advanced ovarian cancers will relapse and when it does, there is less than a 15% chance for a cure. Most women go on to die from the disease after successive rounds of chemotherapy. However, molecular profiling can prioritize the treatment options for women that recur, whether using FDA-approved drugs or investigational medicines in clinical trials.
Upon hearing her diagnosis, she was very disappointed to learn that she could not obtain the same types of tests that she had been using while at Sugen from 1992 through 2002, when the company was developing Sutent.
When Dr. Shawver was at Sugen, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of small-molecule kinase inhibitors for cancer, the company performed routine molecular profiling of patient samples in concert with innovative Phase I and Phase II clinical trial designs.
While now common in leukemias, breast, lung and colon cancers, molecular profiling in ovarian cancer was uncommon until Dr. Shawver’s Clearity Foundation started to bring this new way of thinking to ovarian cancer patients and their oncologists.
The foundation provides evidence-based interpretation from clinical research and its ovarian cancer-specific Diane Barton Database.
Dr. Shawver now lives by the following words from an old Tibetan prayer: “may I be at peace, may I be healed, may I be a source of healing to others."

Getting Personal with
Dr. Laura Shawver
Family: Spouse, Tracy Macuga
Hobbies: Surfing, hiking
Favorite movie: Gone with the Wind

Leerom Segal
A Digital Maverick

Leerom Segal has been named entrepreneur of the year by both the Business Development Bank of Canada and Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year program, and in 2004, he was named to Profit ­Magazine’s Hall of Fame for being the youngest ever CEO of a Profit 100 company.

Getting Personal with
Lee segal
Hobbies: MMA; skiing; race car driving; ­mountaineering; extreme sports of any kind
Reading list: How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton Christensen, James Allworth and Karen Dillon Perez
Favorite book: The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley
Bucket list: Learn to fly a helicopter; write a New York Times bestseller; visit Papua New Guinea
Life lessons: Surround yourself with the best, most ambitious people you possibly can
Most unusual place visited: Bhutan, a country that deliberately measures its gross national happiness

Leerom Segal has been a mover and shaker since his teens. After moving to Canada from Israel when he was 8, Mr. Segal started his first company four years later and before the age of 20 had already started and sold his second company.
His next venture was cofounding Klick, which has grown consistently and profitably for more than 14 years. Mr. Segal hired the best people he knew, his friends, and together this electric group of forward-thinkers has been quite literally clicking along.
There aren’t many accolades that this young entrepreneur hasn’t amassed already. He has been named Entrepreneur of the Year by both the Business Development Bank of Canada and Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Program. In 2004, Mr. Segal was named to Profit Magazine’s Hall of Fame for being the youngest ever CEO of a Profit 100 company. In 2011, he was also named one of Canada’s top 40 under 40.
He has positioned Klick as a world-class digital non-agency. Mr. Segal identified that the traditional agency model was broken, and therefore built a new type of company unhindered by silos and bureaucracy. Today, Klick is one of the top digital companies in the world.
Beyond his pursuit of growth for Klick, Mr. Segal is committed to giving back both personally and through the Klick Foundation. He fully embraces every opportunity for community service by proving to be a dedicated and vital member of the causes he gets behind; including the Brazilian Ball, True Patriot Love, Run for Big Mike, Artbound, and White Knight, to name a few. Most recently, Mr. Segal helped Artbound and Free the Children establish the first all girls’ high school in Kenya.
Mr. Segal is a longtime TEDster and TEDMED participant. He is also an active member of the Clinton Global Initiative and the Young President’s Organization (YPO). Devoted to focusing on the development of young professionals, Mr. Segal takes part in the YPO World of Mentors program, which aims to provide education, idea exchange, and enrichment for young professionals.

Kabir Shahani
The Power Grid

Kabir Shahani cofounded Appature in January 2007 with a vision of delivering leading-edge software that provides tremendous business value while still being easy and fun to use.
Appature Nexus, a healthcare relationship marketing platform, is revolutionizing the way pharmaceutical companies reach healthcare providers and patients. Appature Nexus allows healthcare marketers to reach a broader audience of HCPs and has many other tools that improve patient adherence, monitoring, and communication.
Appature was profitable in its first year and became a multimillion dollar healthcare technology company in a matter of two years. This is a testament to Mr. Shahani’s dedication, which goes well beyond his title as CEO.
Mr. Shahani’s goal is to grow Appature to become the de facto standard of enabling technology for life-sciences marketers, the universal power grid that sits underneath all marketing campaigns to both consumers and HCPs within the industry.
Before launching Appature, Mr. Shahani was the director of business development at Blue Dot, where he helped raise a significant amount of angel funding, developed strategic partnerships, and managed public relations. While at Blue Dot, Mr. Shahani developed a reputation for excellent customer service and project management. And was counted on for delivering a “dream team" of expertise for clients.
Before Blue Dot, Mr. Shahani served as project manager for Avanade, a global consulting firm and joint venture of Microsoft and Accenture, where he was counted on for delivering a “dream team" of expertise for clients.

Kabir Shahani has played an instrumental role in Appature’s growth and the ­adoption of its product Appature Nexus, a ­relationship marketing platform.

Getting Personal with
kabir shahani
Family: Wife
Hobbies: Traveling; music
Reading list: Abundance by Peter Diamandis
Favorite book: Winning by Jack Welch
Favorite movie: Coming to America
Bucket list: See the great migration in the Serengeti; Dance until dawn on the island of Ibiza
Favorite smartphone app: Uber
Inspired by: His team at Appature
Life lessons: Don’t talk past the sale
Time travel: To the past to the early 1970s when the components that would become ­personal computing started to become available

Wendy White
A Passion for Patients

While running her own company, Wendy White goes beyond to serve on the board of the National ­Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD).

Wendy White, president and founder of Siren, is a key thought leader in the rare disease space. She led Siren’s efforts in 2009 to support the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) by helping to launch the first Rare Disease Day in the United States by creating the online campaign — Alone We Are Rare, Together We Are Strong. She has received many awards in recognition for the philanthropic work she and her company do for the rare disease community.
Her employees are proud to be involved in such an important community and they have absorbed Ms. White’s passion as their own as they look to create meaningful communications for patients and caregivers who often don’t have a voice.
Ms. White invested in becoming the first patient relationship marketing (PRM) agency to be dual certified in regulatory compliance for both PRM and digital applications, not because she had to, but because it was the right thing to do for patients on behalf of her clients. Ms. White doesn’t just talk about progress and vision, she acts on her beliefs to make important things happen.
Through Ms. White’s leadership, Siren is the leader in rare disease relationship marketing and will hold that spot for years to come.
Ms. White is a strong, capable leader. She faces challenges as one might when evaluating a complex puzzle — strategically and methodically — until solutions are found and then she applies them broadly across rare disease.
She is bright, articulate, and tender — a change-maker and a fearless visionary who has built a successful company based upon a strategy that was once considered dangerously bold and possibly even foolhardy. However, her laser-focused case for why this healthcare arena demanded special attention and was in fact, prescient for the industry.
In a unique combination of personal passion and business acumen, Ms. White realized she was her target audience and then built the organization to service others facing similar dilemmas. She answered the question, where do you go when you’re too few in number to matter? To the one place where size doesn’t matter: the Internet.
This beautifully simple and inspirational juxtaposition of need and access was the beginning of an organization that has now helped hundreds of thousands of rare disorder patients and their caregivers to not only get answers, but to also convince the powers that be in the healthcare industry that they deserve attention.
A technologist by training and a communicator by trade, Ms. White has trailblazed a new way, which is becoming recognized in the industry as “the" way, to build trust relationships through patient engagement that delivers maximum positive impact.

Getting Personal with
wendy white
Family: Husband, Paul Ford; son, Nate, 18; son, Colin, 15; daughter, Casey, 10
Hobbies: Kayaking; downhill skiing; scuba ­diving
Reading list: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay; The Trusted Advisor by David H. Maister, Charles H. Green and Robert M. Galford; Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Favorite book: Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
Favorite movie: The Gods Must Be Crazy
Bucket list: Run another marathon; travel around the world; hike New Zealand’s Milford Track
Favorite smartphone app: Yelp
Inspired by: Rare disease caregivers and advocates such as Pat Furlong; her daughter, Casey
Life lessons: Plant your feet if you start to feel nervous while giving a talk; it helps to steady you
Most unusual place visited: Rwanda
Under the cloak of invisibility: Follow Elon Musk, founder of the space transport company SpaceX
Time travel: To the past to hang out with her grandparents when they were young; to the ­future to visit her great grandchildren and find out if kids are still hanging out in the basement playing video games

Rick Morrison
Overthrowing Tradition

Rick Morrison has set out to solve the problems facing drug developers and the complex research process.
Aself-proclaimed techno geek, Rick Morrison spent weekends in high school programming with friends and experimenting with different technologies.
But when it came time to decide what to do with his computer science degree after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University, he had no interest in moving into the hot industries of the time, such as video gaming and finance, that were making headlines and scooping up top programmers.
Instead, he chose to enter the life-sciences field, wanting to make a difference.
He became fascinated with the problems facing drug developers and the complex research process, and Mr. Morrison set out to solve them.
Mr. Morrison spent the next 10 years applying his skills to clinical software development, including being one of the lead developers and architects of analytics software used by the FDA and top pharma companies.
But the problems plaguing the industry — from patient safety issues to increasing costs to cumbersome data tracking processes — were not being solved by the traditional tools in the industry, so he founded Comprehend Systems in 2010 to solve these problems.
At Comprehend, Mr. Morrison leads a team that is producing the first clinical visualization and analytics software tailored specifically for modern clinical data systems.
The technology incorporates real-time dashboards, ad-hoc reporting, alerting, and drill-downs simultaneously from multiple disparate clinical data sources.
Comprehend created a system that allows researchers to answer questions in real-time, without relying on the teams of programmers who have traditionally been required.
One of Mr. Morrison’s heroes is Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, who fought and beat cancer and is now doing the same with Parkinson’s disease.
Mr. Morrison is inspired by Mr. Grove’s approach to tackling the disease by finding new ways of collecting and analyzing all available data, rather than focusing narrowly only on traditional methods.

Getting Personal with
Rick morrison
Family: Wife, Neela
Hobbies: Music; hiking; BBQing; playing guitar
Reading list: Game of Thrones; Shogun; ­Crossing the Chasm; Inside the Tornado
Favorite book: Founders at Work by Jessica ­Livingston
Favorite movie: Star Wars
Bucket list: Hiking to Everest Base Camp
Favorite smartphone app: Gmail
Inspired by: Entrepreneurs and people who have the drive and the talent to create ­something from nothing
Time travel: To the future to see where ­technology has gone

Peter Kirk   The American Dream
Getting Personal with
peter kirk
Family: Wife, Torun; three children,
Sophie, 6, Arthur, 3, Tristan, 1
Hobbies: Champagne; skiing; tennis
Favorite book: The Little Prince
Bucket list: Skiing a whole season in Verbier, Switzerland
Favorite smartphone app: Travel apps
Inspired by: Every happy person
Life lessons: Hire two people a year smarter than yourself, and then take a vacation
Under the cloak of invisibility: Watch the cleaners clean his flat
Time travel: To the future to 3012 elections and see what that would all be about

Founder and CEO of WorldOne, Peter Kirk is an inspiring visionary. He personally bootstrapped WorldOne 12 years ago and has grown the diversified organization into a global powerhouse and market leader in global healthcare data collection and fieldwork.
Since its inception, WorldOne has experienced well-deserved, unparalleled growth and currently boasts a client roster and brings access to the world’s largest global networked community — HCP panel — of healthcare professionals, spanning 80 countries and comprising almost 2 million active healthcare professionals.
Recently, Mr Kirk launched three new business units — WorldOne Interactive, WorldOne Data, and Med360. Mr. Kirk is working feverishly to help these bold new groups come of age and combine to deliver a larger array of services for healthcare stakeholders.
Mr. Kirk is addicted to innovation and his inventive ideas have helped cement WorldOne among the leading firms in the healthcare industry.
He is always pushing to create new value for clients and healthcare professionals.
Additionally, he creates a range of incentives for his employees motivating everyone to be the best in everything. Smart, strategic, and insightful, his personality, enthusiasm and contribution to his business are matchless.  Colleagues say he’s the best-dressed person in pharma, but then that’s to be expected since he’s Danish.

Smart, strategic, ­insightful, and ­innovative, Peter Kirk’s personality, ­excitement level, and passion are ­matchless.

Founder and CEO of WorldOne, Peter Kirk is an inspiring visionary. He personally bootstrapped WorldOne 12 years ago and has grown the diversified organization into a global powerhouse and market leader in global healthcare data collection and fieldwork.
Since its inception, WorldOne has experienced well-deserved, unparalleled growth and currently boasts a client roster and brings access to the world’s largest global networked community — HCP panel — of healthcare professionals, spanning 80 countries and comprising almost 2 million active healthcare professionals.
Recently, Mr Kirk launched three new business units — WorldOne Interactive, WorldOne Data, and Med360. Mr. Kirk is working feverishly to help these bold new groups come of age and combine to deliver a larger array of services for healthcare stakeholders.
Mr. Kirk is addicted to innovation and his inventive ideas have helped cement WorldOne among the leading firms in the healthcare industry.
He is always pushing to create new value for clients and healthcare professionals.
Additionally, he creates a range of incentives for his employees motivating everyone to be the best in everything. Smart, strategic, and insightful, his personality, enthusiasm and contribution to his business are matchless.  Colleagues say he’s the best-dressed person in pharma, but then that’s to be expected since he’s Danish.

Ilyssa Levins
A Shining Example of a Woman Entrepreneur

Ilyssa Levins is an ­opportunity mogul — an expert in discovering and ­operationalizing new business concepts that advance the field.

The broader umbrella of what Ilyssa Levins represents — her positioning if you will — is one of a business opportunity genius: she simply sees new and better ways of reaching audiences, spurring them to action, and arming them with tools to go farther and faster.
Colleagues say if she is given a new product or service to introduce, she will knock it out of the creative park, and she will most likely also take what she’s seen and suggest a new business model, a new revenue stream, or an aha moment for addressing a market gap that, once she talks, you either agree — dumbfounded you didn’t see it yourself — or trust implicitly that she can pull it off, however risky it may sound.
Ms. Levins’ track record is peppered with innovations that others have emulated, among them establishing the first agency-based clinical trial recruitment practice, advocacy business unit, and internal strategic consulting firm.
At Grey Healthcare/GCI she treated her impressive, global healthcare practice as a petri dish for new ideas and concepts. She was the brain trust for many new creative ideas and strategies. The array of breakthrough pharma/healthcare products that have her stamp on them is legion: from Augmentin and Oil of Olay, to the Rx-to-OTC switch of Tavist D and Pepcid AC.
Ms. Levins takes thought leadership to an entirely different level. Many people have ideas, but she has the exceptional ability not only to formulate creative and well-conceived solutions to problems, but to make them actionable, too. She is also able to persuade others to adopt her recommendations.
Her clear direction and constructive feedback demonstrate management skills that motivate others to perform at the highest possible level. She sees problems as opportunities and opportunities as market advantages.
Ms. Levins is a role model for those who want to embrace creativity in their professional lives and balance that with the expectations and demands of the life-science industry.
Those with whom she works say she is the most positive, generous and thoughtful person they have encountered in their professional careers. Her can-do attitude, brilliant mind, and contagious energy are truly inspirational.
Ms. Levins is brave in her approach to business; she has gained faith in her ability to greet challenges by acting and then seeing the results of her work and the praise and respect of others that it has brought to her. She routinely and graciously takes on responsibility for projects that others couldn’t imagine being responsible for — and doing them with care and attention.
Ms. Levins is also a great communicator. She recognizes that the most important part of any business is the human element and communication is the key to successful relationships with people. Above all, Ms. Levins has a keen ability to listen and hear what others are trying to say. She is 100% dedicated to the fulfillment of her personal and professional goals and brings a single-minded focus to everything that she does. Finally, Ms. Levins takes nothing for granted; she respects and nurtures her business and her clients.
Ms. Levins is a force to be reckoned with. A successful business builder and strategist in the pharmaceutical industry, as president and founder of the Center for Communication Compliances, she is a pioneer in communications compliance and her insights have changed the discourse taking place in today’s pharmaceutical industry.
Her passion for her work and her dedication to inspiring others is seen most palpably in her work with the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association.
Ms. Levins is the jet fuel that propels many of the HBA committees to higher heights. She makes order out of chaos and possesses a strong collaborative spirit that encourages engagement — the key to success for any organization.
Team members feel valued when they work with Ms. Levins, and more importantly, they grow. She mentors, coaches, and takes all of her roles very seriously.
She has been instrumental in transforming the HBA award assets into more desirable tools to serve the association’s membership. Ms. Levins recently launched a collaborative effort between the HBA and the Drug Information Association and is credited as this initiative’s  brainchild. She truly knows how to move the ball down the field, and continually put points on the scoreboard, while leading with her heart.
It is impossible to work with Ms. Levins and not be touched by her inner spirit. She embodies the strength and tenderness that are critical to be a leader who inspires. She has an almost luminous quality that is rooted in authenticity.
She has the ability to draw people closer even as she turns the focus to the bigger picture. All of this inspires people to listen, to embrace, and to follow. Whether she is out in front or acting behind the scenes on behalf of the team, her positive impact and contribution are felt.
In addition to having a wealth of experience she is an amazing networker. She is great at connecting people and helping others find solutions.
Ms. Levins is an accomplished, dedicated woman, yet she never loses sight of humanity, with warmth, compassion, and a sense of greater purpose. She has had a positive impact on countless men and women in this industry.

Getting Personal with
ilyssa levins
Family: Husband; daughter Marlena
Hobbies: Dancing; going to the opera, ballet; symphonies; jazz; and fashion
Reading list: Power of Now; Tao Te Ching; ­historical fiction including Franklin and Eleanor; The Paris Wife about Hemingway; Einstein’s Dreams; Cleopatra; The Boleyn Sisters
Favorite book: The Magus by John Fowles
Favorite movie: Curious Case of Benjamin ­Button
Bucket list: To go on a photographic African Safari; to be able to meditate at least 30 ­minutes a day; to start a news station that only reports on happy, inspiring events
Favorite smartphone app: Starbucks
Inspired by: Her father, a World War II hero
Life lessons: Don’t take business personally
Most unusual place visited: Petra, Jordan
Under the cloak of invisibility: Oval Office in the White House to listen to our country’s ­leaders make decisions
Time travel: To her future self to confirm that all is well at 93, and then to the past to tell her 13-year-old self to have faith and stay the course

Pat Furlong
A Crusader

Pat Furlong has not only inspired and ­influenced patients and ­parents through her role, but also doctors, ­pharmaceutical and biotech companies, other advocacy groups, and Congress as well.

Patricia Furlong is one of the most inspiring individuals in the healthcare industry and one of the biggest forces in the Duchenne community, worldwide.
Always in great demand as a speaker, Ms. Furlong has influenced and inspired Duchenne patients and their families and leaders of advocacy groups representing many rare disorders.
Since founding Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy (PPMD), Ms. Furlong has worked tirelessly to advance the discovery and development of treatments for Duchenne. In 2001, she helped lobby Congress to pass legislation that has allocated almost $500 million for research into muscular dystrophy, of which more than $200 million has gone to Duchenne research — surpassing the research money raised for Duchenne by other advocacy groups.
No matter whether she is a panelist, lobbying Congress, meeting with researchers on the latest treatment development or planning the next educational conference, she takes the time to speak to parents and hear their concerns first-hand and offer her advice and guidance.
Although Ms. Furlong lost her own sons when they were in their early teens to Duchenne, it is not uncommon today for patients to live into their 20s and beyond, thanks in part to the many initiatives she has championed.
Ms. Furlong has encouraged pharmaceutical and biotech companies to pursue the disease in their pipelines.
One such collaboration was with PTC Therapeutics, which partnered with Ms. Furlong and PPMD in 2007 for the development of ataluren, an investigational drug for patients with Duchenne due to a nonsense mutation, which encompasses about 15% of the Duchenne population. After a couple of years working together, Ms. Furlong said she was supportive of the research, but challenged the company to focus on the rest of the patient population — the other 85%. Ms. Furlong raised $1 million, from which promising targets evolved. In collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania, PTC went on to receive $15.4 million in grants from the NIH to further its research. The expansion of research in Duchenne, as well as PTC’s understanding of the disease, would not have been possible without Ms. Furlong.
Ms. Furlong is convinced that one day, there will be a treatment for this deadly disease.

Getting Personal with
pat furlong

Family: Husband, Tom Furlong, M.D.; daughters Jennifer and Michelle; sons, Christopher and Patrick (both ­deceased)
Hobbies: Pilates; bikram yoga; theater
Reading list: Steve Jobs biography
Favorite book: Intensive Care: A Family Love Story by Mary-Lou Weisman
Favorite movie: Shawshank Redemption
Bucket list: Visit the Sacred Valley of the Inca in the Andes and Machu Picchu
Favorite smartphone app: PPMD
Inspired by: Her sons and daughters because of their courage and willingness to fight for something bigger than themselves; farmers because of their respect for the earth; children because they are curious, creative, honest, and loving
Most unusual place visited: Albania, a country that has seemingly lost hope
Under the cloak of invisibility: FDA/CDER to listen and learn
Time travel: To the past, 20 years ago to see her sons; to the future 100 years to see the advances in medicine and technology

Terri Clevenger  Patient Power
Getting Personal with
TERRI?CLEVENGER

Family: Husband, John; daughter Caitlin, 21; son Drew, 19; son Zachary, 13
Hobbies: Reading; running
Reading list: Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes; 11/22/63 by Stephen King; The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukharjee
Favorite books: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier; Special Topics of Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
Favorite movie: Princess Bride
Bucket list: Visit the Galapagos Islands and walk in ­Darwin’s shoes
Favorite smartphone apps: Pandora; Key Chain; ­MyFitnessPal
Inspired by: Susan Hellmann, M.D., formerly Genentech and currently UCSF; Kathy Giusti, cofounder of MMRF
Life lessons: Never hide behind email; don’t be afraid to pick up the phone
Most unusual place visited: Seoul, South Korea, to work at the 1988 Olympics

Terri Clevenger is a well-known expert on the subject linking patient advocacy and drug, diagnostic, and device development in both the industry and academic settings.
Through her work as founder and president, Continuum Health Communications, she has become increasingly passionate about personalized medicine and the need to involve all parties to ensure its success.
One of the first to understand the true power and value of patient advocacy for patients and for the industry, Mr. Clevenger has focused her career on using straightforward and clear communications to bring both stakeholder groups to the table in a respectful and purposeful way.
She uses her strong connections with patient advocacy groups to move drug, device, and diagnostic development forward for her industry clients, realizing that both parties, and most importantly, patients in need of new therapies, benefit when they work together.
Ms. Clevenger is also a cofounder of DxInsights, an educational industry organization focused on enlightening others on the power and value of diagnostics and how they directly impact healthcare costs and patient outcomes. She also has provided communications counsel to EPEMED, the European Personalized Medicine and Diagnostics industry group, and serves on the professional advisory board for A Home Within, a national advocacy organization fostering youths’ well-being.
In addition, she was awarded the Women Executives in Public Relations Foundation Award for Social Responsibility for her work with cancer survivors.

One of the first to understand the true power and value of patient advocacy for patients and for industry, Terri Clevenger has focused her career on using straightforward and clear communications to bring all groups to the table.

Alexis Borisy  Let the Force Be With You
Alexis Borisy is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to translating basic research and technologies into therapeutics and diagnostics that benefit patients.
Having been the cofounder of five biotechnology companies — CombinatoRx, Forma Therapeutics, Foundation Medicine, Blueprint Medicines, and Warp Drive Bio — Mr. Borisy is a forward-thinker with the ability to generate great ideas, identify new technologies, and determine where to apply them for the benefit of market need.
Mr. Borisy is considered to be a great partner to brainstorm with as he has a strong knowledge base, transformative ideas, and enjoys intellectual discourse.
Throughout his career, Mr. Borisy has enabled promising technologies to be applied most effectively to facilitate the drug development process. His peers consider some of his most meaningful accomplishments to be successfully founding and leading teams to build CombinatoRx, and more recently Foundation Medicine. Mr. Borisy’s work with Foundation Medicine will be one of his many meaningful ideas that ultimately has the greatest impact on most cancer patients. This idea ties perfectly with his insatiable desire to personalize the care of cancer therapy, while also combining approaches from the both the life-sciences and technology industries.
Mr. Borisy’s passion, intelligence, and insight into important initiatives have influenced many people. He pushes people to not settle for today’s best, and feels passionately about searching for what will be best tomorrow.
Mr. Borisy serves on the board of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, is an overseer at the Boston Museum of Science, is the chairman and co-founder of Forma Therapeutics, and serves on the board of Blueprint Medicines.

Alexis Borisy’s ­passion for ­personalized ­medicine, more ­targeted therapies, and more efficient and rational drug design can be seen in many companies and pursuits today.
Getting Personal with
ALEXIS BORISY
Family: Married, four children
Hobbies: Reading non-fiction; thinking about how the world works
Reading list: The Social Animal by David Brooks; Finance and the Good Society by Richard Schiller

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