Thomas Cori, PhD
Former Chairman & CEO of Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO. He received his BS and PhD from Washington University, St. Louis, MO.
Virginia Herndon, PhD
Dr. Herndon joined Zygogen in 2000. Herndon earned her Ph.D. at Yale University where she studied the molecular genetics of Drosophila. She received her postdoctoral training at Bristol Myers Squibb in Immunology. Prior to joining Zygogen she was Vice President of Scheer & Company, Inc. where she spent over ten years engaged in a variety of activities including due diligence on private companies for venture capital clients and on public companies for fund managers; evaluation of potential product/technology acquisitions for pharmaceutical companies; strategic analysis of emerging technologies; new company origination; and business development/ corporate partnering for several companies in the biopharmaceutical industry.
Shuo Lin, PhD
Zygogen’s scientific co-founder and a Professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at the University of California. Previously he was an Associate Professor at the Institute of Molecular Medicine and Genetics at the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) where he developed the Z-TagSM technology. Dr. Lin received his PhD in biochemistry at Boston University and first began working with zebrafish as a post-doctoral fellow at MIT in the laboratory of Dr. Nancy Hopkins. While at MIT he published the first integration and germ line transmission of a pseudotyped retroviral vector in zebrafish (Science, 265, 666-668, 1994).
John Richard, MBA
Former Executive Vice President at SEQUUS Pharmaceuticals
Previously Richard held the positions of Head of Business Development for VIVUS and Genome Therapeutics Corp. He was also Founder and CEO of IMPATH Laboratories, the leading cancer pathology reference laboratory in the United States. He received his BS from Stanford and his MBA from Harvard University.
Nina Sawczuk, MS, MBA
Co-Founder and CEO of Zygogen
Thomas N. Urban, MBA
Former Chairman & CEO of Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc., Des Moines, IA (acquired by Dupont, 1999). Present board positions: Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C.; Intoximeters, St. Louis, MO; National Tropical Botanical Garden, Hawaii; Ventria Biologics, Sacramento, CA. Mr. Urban received his BA and MBA from Harvard University.
Rachel Stauffer
Ms. Stauffer joined American Equity in October 2004 to start up a private placement group. Previously Ms. Stauffer had been a partner at Cybus Capital Markets, LLC, a merchant banking firm in Des Moines, Iowa. At Cybus, she was involved in the investment banking practice that led private placements of debt and equity for middle market companies. Since 2000, she also participated in the management of a $43 million private equity fund. Ms. Stauffer graduated from Williams College in 1985 and completed an MBA executive education program at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania in 1992.