The 2021 Webinar Series

Bea Boccalandro, Founder & President, VeraWorks

Bea Boccalandro is author of “Do Good At Work,” a delightful manual for making work meaningful for anyone in any job. She also helps companies, managers and individuals make a positive social impact from everyday work. Her clients include Aetna, Caesars Entertainment, FedEx, IBM, PwC, Toyota and Western Digital.

Michael Cooke, VP Social and Environmental Responsibility, Jabil Group

Michael is a highly qualified director with extensive international experience in a wide range of industrial sectors and blue-chip companies. He has financial, M&A and marketing experience complimented with Sustainability leadership and HSE/Quality expertise.

Lena Chaihorsky, Co-Founder & VP Payer Innovation, Alva 10

Lena is the co-founder and Vice President of Payer Innovation at Alva10. With a background in biology and mathematics from Tufts, she is a skilled healthcare executive with a proven track record of developing and executing value based reimbursement strategies for diagnostics companies. Lena has extensive leadership experience in sales, national contracting, and all aspects of reimbursement within start-up and global companies, most recently AmniSure and QIAGEN.

Shyam Natarajan, Founder & CEO, Avenda Health

Shyam has expertise in image-guided interventions, machine learning, and embedded systems. He is instrumental in the commercialization of targeted prostate biopsy creating and executing the foundational validation studies. He has led an NIH-funded lab as a professor at UCLA Urology, Surgery, and Bioengineering.

Shane Keating, Cybersecurity Engineering & Project Manager, ICS

Shane is responsible for Cybersecurity project delivery in ICS, especially focused on projects in the Medical Devices area. Shane is based in Warsaw, Poland. Shane was previously working on receiver authentication of GNSS signals, consulting for the European Space Agency. Previous to that, Shane spent 13 years as Engineering Manager and Project Manager at Intel’s Data Center Group in Ireland, working on Cryptographic Acceleration Technologies and embedded software for leading edge products.

Milton Yarberry, Director of Medical Programs, ICS

Milton Yarberry is Director of Medical Programs at ICS. He is a certified PMP with a background in software architecture, medical device product development and program management. He spent a decade in consulting working with startup companies, and 15 years working with Class II and Class III medical device manufacturers.

Chris Gates, Director of Product Security, Velentium

Chris is an expert in the area of embedded and system level information security. Securing embedded systems from hacking is an emergent and challenging property of device and system design. Chris has been especially focused on medical device security, due to his extensive medical device development background and the risk of such devices, all coupled with the very long life of these devices in the field.

Estefi Alvarez, Senior Consultant, Global Market Access, Alira Health

Estefi is an innovation-focused business/corporate development foundation builder in the medical devices industry. She is a driver of revenue and profit-critical decision making for product portfolio/pipeline, M&A and licensing/distribution deals. Estefi is a big-picture strategist synthesizing market/competitive research, clinical needs/viability assessment/healthcare economic outcomes, regulatory savvy and has a strong academic medical technology background.

Brian Vaughn, VP of Health Economics & Market Access, Johnson & Johnson

Brina is a growth focused market access leader with a passion for optimizing patient access and growth for innovative medical technologies. He is experienced in new product development, new business development, evidence strategy, real world evidence, market access, health economics and reimbursement for surgical and digital technology across numerous clinical specialties. Brian is a committed people leader with a passion for developing talent and building highly motivated and successful teams.

Dennis Hillen, VP Southeast Region Leader, Oscar Health

Dennis is a cross-functional leader consistently tasked with strategy/business model development, horizontal/matrixed team alignment, and tactical execution of transformational board-level initiatives. He brings a broad expertise across technology, finance, strategy, and digital health product development that has been honed over varied experiences ranging from startups to Fortune 100 organizations.

Jim Warren, Business Unit Director, Jabil Healthcare

In 1998 Jim started as a Manager in Training, as part of the Jabil Emerging Leaders (JEL) Development program. The JEL program provided Jim experiential learning of Jabil’s core competencies that serve as the foundation for his ability to create differentiated solutions for his customers. In 2015 Jim joined the Jabil Healthcare division as a Business Unit Director and now leads business teams in the US, Mexico, Ireland, Singapore and China. Over the past year Jim’s scope has increased to add additional customers and a larger footprint in Asia.

Joe McBeth, VP of Global Supply Chain Manufacturing, Jabil Healthcare

As vice president of global supply chain management for Jabil’s Regulated Industries Segment, which includes healthcare, automotive, transportation, defense and aerospace, Joe McBeth oversees the division’s supply chain operations, including inventory control, strategic sourcing, supplier development and supply chain creation. Prior to his current role, McBeth helped build the broader global supply chain organization within Jabil, overhauling a previously decentralized organization into a highly efficient, regionally based, global program.

Jon Behm, VP Strategic Sourcing, Cardinal Health

Jon is an experienced professional with extensive experience & skills in: supply chain management, lean six sigma / operational excellence, global sourcing, disposables & medical device manufacturing, product development / R&D, marketing, engineering & customer relations. His career path continues toward general management of a small to medium-sized company or business within a large corporation.

Kate MacNamee, Director of Design Research, Ximedica

Kate offers deep expertise in product research and design methods in accordance with a wide array of regulatory bodies and standards organizations, including FDA, DoD, and ISO/IEC.

Michael Neidert, VP Strategic Development West Coast, Ximedica

Michael’s corporate engineering career has crossed multiple disciplines in the implanted medical device field having worked on concept projects in electrophysiology, cardiology, neurology, endovascular, and medical imaging/navigation. Michael is familiar with a broad range of clinical practices and has worked on projects that have featured mechanical, chemical, biological, hardware, and software components.

Taylor Brown, Senior Medical Device Guru, Greenlight Guru

Taylor is a technical writing and scientific communication specialist. Her specialties include FDA readiness and compliance, document control, internal auditing, and investigative writing.

Matthew Wagener, VP of Clinical Operations, Proxima Clinical Research

Matt has over 15 years of industry experience working across multiple life science businesses in key areas including clinical operations, business operations, and business development. Prior to joining the Proxima team, he was a member of the executive team and the Sr. Director of Corporate Operations at MedSource, a CRO focused on Oncology, Neurology, and Rare Diseases.

Rob MacCuspie, Regulatory Affairs Manager, Proxima Clinical Research

Prior to joining the Proxima team, Rob served as the VP of Science at a rolled goods materials science startup, leading their entrance to the medical device space by helping identify regulatory strategies and leading building their first quality management systems, and as Director of Science at a leading dietary supplement company, where he contributed to the company’s first medical device product development regulatory and testing strategies and developed and delivered product education for practitioners and consumers.

Jón Ingi Bergsteinsson, VP Global Business Development, SMART-TRIAL

In 2013 Jón founded SMART-TRIAL with one goal – enable all MedTech companies to collect high-quality clinical data in compliance with industry regulations. Through SMART-TRIAL Jón has managed to combine his skills in clinical informatics with interest in medical technology and research to support an import vision for the industry. Tailor-made for MedTech, SMART-TRIAL offers a do-it-yourself Electronic Data Capture for clinical investigations, PMCF and PMPF – including registries and surveys.

Noam Krantz, VP Venture Investments, Johnson & Johnson

Noam Krantz leads Business Development at Ethicon Inc, Johnson & Johnson’s surgical division (about $9 billion of worldwide revenue). Noam is continuously developing and executing license and acquisition strategies for the business and across the Medical Device sector. He sits on the Ethicon Global Management Board and leads the Medical Device Deal Committee. He has been in this role since 2011. He served on the company’s Asia Pacific management board from 2012-2105.

Noam began his career in finance/M&A as an Associate in Bear Stearns & Co.’s New York investment banking division in 2001. There he worked on advising healthcare and technology companies on M&A and corporate finance transactions. Noam left Bear Stearns in 2004 to join Inamed Corporation, where he was Senior Manager of Strategy and Corporate Development. At Inamed, Noam advised the executive team on its M&A strategy for all of its businesses – breast implants, facial aesthetics (Collagen, Juvederm and Dysport), and obesity (LapBand and intragrastric balloons). He also assisted in the management of the company’s investor relations effort. Upon the sale of Inamed to Allergan in March 2006, Noam moved to Mentor Corporation, where he was Vice President of the company’s Corporate Development group and where he also ran the Company’s investor relations effort. Mentor Corporation was sold to J&J in January 2009 and is now a division within J&J’s Cardiac and Specialty Care business.

Noam has a BS in Biological Sciences from University of California Santa Barbara (1996) and an MBA from Columbia Business School (2001).

Jinny Lee, Vice President, Exploration & Strategic Marketing, Edwards

Jinny Lee is the Vice President of exploration and strategic marketing for the Advanced Technology division of Edwards Lifesciences. She joined the company in 2001 where she was responsible for overseeing product development and global marketing for all areas in heart valve therapy including repair and replacement initiatives for the mitral, aortic and tricuspid valves. Previously she held positions of increasing responsibility in marketing and product development at Biocoll Laboratories and later GenSci Orthobiologics where she helped develop and launch multiple products for the spine and orthopedic markets and partnered with Depuy Acromed, a Johnson and Johnson Company, in the sales efforts. She started her curiosity in medicine as a researcher at the Long Beach VA Hospital and at the US Food and Drug Administration in the public affairs group located in Southern California. She earned her Bachelor of Science degrees in Biological Sciences and Environmental Analysis and Design and a MBA from the University of California, Irvine. She also serves as a board member for Casa Teresa and UCI Beall Applied Innovation.

David Cassak, Managing Partner, MedTech Strategist

David Cassak has more than 30 years of experience in the healthcare industry. Cassak co-founded Windhover Information Inc., along with his partner, Roger Longman, in which they spun out exceptional publications such as IN VIVO, START-UP, Medtech Insight, Emerging Medical Ventures and The RPM Report. Cassak also served as Vice President, Content, and Managing Director, Medical Devices for Elsevier Business Intelligence, a Reed Elsevier Company, including the publications The Gray Sheet and The Pink Sheet. He is a frequent speaker before various companies and trade groups within the medical device industry and is widely known for his vast knowledge and reporting in MedTech.

Casey McGlynn, Partner, Wilson Sonsini

Casey McGlynn is a Partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. In 1990 Casey McGlynn formed the Life Sciences Group at the firm and today has one of the largest practices in the country focused on Medtech, Healthtech and Biotech companies.

Matt Griffiths, Director, Silicon Valley Bank

Matt Griffiths is a Director at Silicon Valley Bank focused specifically on the Northeast Medical Device and Digital Health sectors of Healthcare. Based out of Boston, Matt provides coverage across these verticals from New York City up through Eastern Canada. He and his team focus on providing comprehensive financial products and services as well as flexible lending solutions to clients at every life stage, development through commercialization. In addition to overseeing the continued growth of the Medical Device and Digital Health practice, he is also responsible for developing relationships with key Venture Firms and Strategic/Corporate partners that operate within these markets.

Over his 9+ years at SVB, Matt has worked in a wide variety of roles both domestically as well as internationally across both technology and life sciences. He’s provided solutions to companies of all stages from early and pre-VC companies to late stage high growth public operations.

Hanson Gifford, Managing Partner, The Foundry

Since its inception in 1998, Hanson has led The Foundry in the invention, identification and development of new technologies; the formation, financing, and staffing of the new companies; and ongoing support of these new ventures as a board member.

Tom Shehab, Managing Partner, Arboretum Ventures

Tom draws upon his extensive healthcare experience as a physician and healthcare executive to identify medical device and health IT companies that improve patient outcomes and decrease healthcare costs. He currently serves as a board director for Avation Medical, Fifth Eye, Health Scholars, Lucina Health and SonarMD and led Arboretum’s investment in nVision Medical, which was acquired by Boston Scientific in 2018. At ArborMetrix, an Arboretum portfolio company, he led the development of the clinical strategy as Chief Medical Officer during a major product launch.

Prior to joining Arboretum in 2014, Tom served as a member of Arboretum’s Technical Advisory Board. He practiced medicine for 15 years as a gastroenterologist serving as Chair of Medicine at Integrated Health Associates (IHA), a multi-specialty group consisting of 300+ providers, and as Chief of Staff at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital for more than 1,000 physicians. Tom is engaged as board member for several healthcare innovation initiatives including the Cleveland Clinic Medical Device Advisory Council and the Center for Machine Learning and Health at Carnegie Mellon University. He is also the current Chairman of the Michigan Venture Capital Association.

Steve Pacelli, Executive VP & Managing Director, Dexcom Ventures

Steve Pacelli is Executive Vice President and Managing Director, Dexcom Ventures.

In this role, Steve is focused on investment opportunities in sensing technology, data analytics, remote patient monitoring and population health, broadening Dexcom’s commitment to advancing better outcomes in healthcare.

Prior to this role, Steve was Executive Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development from 2012 to 2021. Since joining Dexcom in April 2006, Steve has served in roles of increasing responsibility, including Chief Operating Officer, Chief Administrative Officer, Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Vice President of Legal Affairs.

Prior to Dexcom, Steve served as a corporate attorney specializing in finance, mergers and acquisitions, and general corporate matters, and in an executive role as general counsel of several privately held companies.

Steve currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Biocom California, the largest and most experienced leader and advocate for California’s life science sector. He also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Connect, a community nonprofit supporting innovators and entrepreneurs in Southern California by providing access to investors, mentors, and education, and as a member of the Board of Directors of EvoNexus, California’s leading non-profit startup technology incubator.

Steve is also a dedicated philanthropist, choosing to focus his efforts as a member of the Board of Directors of Big Brothers Big Sisters of San Diego, an organization dedicated to creating and supporting one-to-one mentoring relationships that ignite the power and promise of youth. He also serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of Pacific Ridge School, a group of dedicated and informed community leaders who are passionate about the value of education and are committed to building and strengthening the school.

Anne DeGheest, Founder, Healthtech Capital

Anne DeGheest pioneered the HealthTech/Digital Health space as a healthcare executive, entrepreneur, angel investor, corporate advisor, and mentor capitalist. She founded MedStars and HealthTech Capital, an ecosystem of angels, venture capitalists, providers, payers, and healthcare industry key players that are dedicated to funding and mentoring new “HealthTech” startups to decrease healthcare cost and empower patients. Anne also organized and moderated the HealthTech Conference on how to successfully build innovative HealthTech businesses and how to change healthcare delivery.

Anne has been a corporate development advisor to large healthcare companies and a mentor capitalist specializing in investing and mentoring early stage companies in healthcare. Her life science portfolio companies have generated over $6 billion exits. Anne provided angel capital, hands-on operating expertise and business strategy in the founding of major venture-backed companies like Pyxis, Aspect Medical, VISX, Thermage, VISICU, and Masimo. She grew new entrepreneurial divisions of large corporations like Johnson & Johnson, Baxter, Medtronic, and McKesson. Anne was an Entrepreneur-In-Residence with Canaan Partners and IVP. She has been a speaker at industry conferences, and a guest-lecturer at Stanford Business School, Dartmouth Tuck, and Singularity University.

Anne holds an MBA from Harvard and a Master in Business Engineering from the University of Brussels.

John Weiser, President First Run Production, Sony Pictures Television

John Weiser serves as President First Run Production, Sony Pictures Television. He previously was President, U.S. distribution for Sony Pictures Television (SPT) where he oversaw all domestic sales operations for SPT, including sales of feature films produced by Sony Pictures, first-run and off-network syndicated programs and Sony Pictures library titles to U.S. broadcast networks, cable networks and television station groups along with SVOD, AVOD and domestic pay television.

Weiser also managed the personnel and operations of four regional offices located in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Atlanta.

Joining the company in 1990 as account executive, west coast, Weiser became division manager in 1992. In 1995, he was promoted to vice president, west coast, managing all sales activities for the regional office. In 1999, Weiser was named senior vice president, sales for Columbia TriStar Television Distribution, expanding his duties to include sales of SPE’s vast library. With more than 500 television series and 4,000 films, it is the largest catalogue of its kind. Weiser became executive vice president, US distribution for Sony Pictures Television in 2002.

Before joining the studio, Weiser served as senior vice president, Guber-Peters Entertainment and head of sales for Chuck Barris Entertainment. His television career began at Tribune Broadcasting, where he oversaw its northeast and Midwest sales offices.

Weiser served on the board of directors of the Television Bureau of Advertising from 2004-2012. In 2006, he served on the board for the Broadcaster’s Foundation charity event. From 2003-2006, Weiser was the co-chairman of the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE), and from 2003-2005, he served on the fundraising steering committee board for the Cedars-Sinai Prostate Cancer Center. Weiser also served on the board of the Southern California chapter of UNICEF.

Weiser currently serves on the board of Props for Tots. For the past two years, he has served as co-Executive sponsor for SPE’s Emerging Professionals as well as a committee member for the SPE Council for Inclusion.

Paul Grand, CEO, MedTech Innovator

Paul is the founder and CEO of MedTech Innovator. He created and managed MedTech Innovator as a program within RCT Ventures from 2013 – 2016. In 2016, with the financial support of RCT and other sponsors, Paul left to run MedTech Innovator as a stand-alone company. He spent 11 years as Director and Managing Director at RCT Ventures, the investment arm of Research Corporation Technologies, Inc. Prior to RCT, Paul was co-founder and CEO of startups in the medtech, pharma, and tech sectors.