Board of Directors
Jack K. Ahrens II
Is a founding General Partner of TGap Venture Capital Funds, headquartered in Kalamazoo, a Midwest focused venture capital fund that has raised over $46 million. Jack has been a venture capitalist since 1979; first as President of United Capital Corporation of Illinois (an SBIC), since 1983 as a General Partner of Pathfinder Venture Capital Funds I, II, and III. Prior to that he had seven years of experience in bank trust investments and operations. He has served on many Boards during his career including Afmedica, Inc., Central Data, Inc., Micro Business Applications, Inc., MedVantx, Inc., MinuteClinic, Inc., NeoChord, Inc., Rapid Diagnostek, Regenesis Biomedical and Vector General, Inc.
Alfred R. Berkeley III
Has been a Noxilizer individual investor since 2006. Mr. Berkeley has over 35 years of experience in the financial industry. He is currently the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Noxilizer. In addition, he is Vice Chairman of Gentag, Inc., a developer of technology for near field communications. Formerly, Berkeley Chaired the Board of Pipeline Financial Group, Inc, the parent of Pipeline Trading Systems, LLC, an equities and options trading company. Mr. Berkeley has served as President and then Vice-Chairman of The NASDAQ Stock Market, Inc. Before NASDAQ, he was a Managing Director of Alex Brown & Sons, a leading investment bank, and co-founded Alex Brown’s Technology Group in 1975. The Technology Group completed about 500 financial offerings for clients while he was associated with Alex Brown. Mr. Berkeley was a trustee of the Johns Hopkins University, served on the board of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, LLC. and is a Trustee of Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina. He is a Director of the World Economic Forum USA and was Chairman of XBRL US, a non-profit established to set standards for GAAP taxonomies to be used by public companies to report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. He is a director of XBRL International. Mr. Berkeley is a graduate of the Wharton School of Finance of the University of Pennsylvania (MBA) and the University of Virginia (B.A.). He served as an officer in the United States Air Force.
John L. Brooks III
Is the President and CEO of Arete Worldwide, LLC. Previously, John was President and CEO of the Joslin Diabetes Center, a leader in diabetes research, care, and education. A well-known life sciences executive, Mr. Brooks has been a consultant to numerous life science companies and was a co-founder of Prism Venture Partners, a venture capital firm which raised over $1.25 billion in capital. He was formerly a general manager at Pfizer/Valleylab in Boulder, Colo., where he developed and executed a minimally-invasive surgery and emerging businesses strategy. Prior to that, at Pfizer/Strato Medical, he led the growth of a rapidly evolving vascular access medical device business. Mr. Brooks has co-founded six life sciences companies including Insulet (PODD). He is a Trustee of Suffolk University and is a board member for a number of disruptive life science companies. He holds an M.S. in Business and a B.B.A. cum laude from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is a Certified Public Accountant and a Certified Financial Planner.
Lawrence Bruder
Noxilizer’s current CEO, brings over 25 years of leadership and operational experience in large and small life science companies, including Becton Dickinson, Applied Biosystems, Leica, Olympus, and Guava Technologies. Most recently, he was President and CEO of venture-backed Guava Technologies, which was sold to Millipore Biosciences in 2009. Much of his experience prior to Guava was at Becton Dickinson, where he held a number of significant positions over a 10-year period. His responsibilities in both companies included the clinical and regulatory aspects of 510(k) submittals to the FDA for medical devices, significant commercial interaction with pharmaceutical companies, and high-level business development transactional activity; all of these being a critical part of Noxilizer’s needs. Mr. Bruder holds a B.S. from Rochester Institute of Technology and Master of Management in Marketing and Economics from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Charles Immel
Is an independent healthcare industry advisor with broad global experience in medical devices and biopharmaceuticals. He has served most recently in executive leadership roles in Gambro, a large European manufacturer of renal therapy products recently acquired by Baxter Healthcare Corporation. Chuck was President of the Healthcare Division of STERIS Corporation, a leading global provider of medical devices in infection prevention and surgical environments. He started his career with Baxter Healthcare Corporation in the Biosciences Division where he held a variety of commercial leadership roles in North America, Europe and Japan. During his career he has launched numerous successful new products and services in the healthcare market by focusing on solutions that improve the efficacy and safety of care, while addressing overall system cost. He is a former member of BioOhio (Board of Trustees and Executive Committee), AdvaMed, American Chamber of Commerce Japan and Plasma Protein Therapeutics Association (Operations Committee). He is a graduate of The Ohio State University.
Dr. Edward Miller
Served as chief executive officer of Johns Hopkins Medicine and the 13th dean of The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He retired from this position on June 30, 2012. As part of Dr. Miller’s vision to improve access through the development of a regional, integrated health care delivery system, Howard County General Hospital was acquired and integrated into Johns Hopkins Medicine. Dr. Miller also led the effort to integrate Suburban Hospital and Health System in Bethesda, Maryland, Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C., and All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, into Johns Hopkins Medicine. Under Dr. Miller’s leadership, Johns Hopkins Medicine broadened its international presence to include relationships with hospitals and other health care-related institutions in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, including an agreement to help Malaysia develop its first fully integrated private four-year graduate medical school and teaching hospital. One of his most significant accomplishments as Dean/CEO has been the massive rebuilding and renovation projects that have transformed the East Baltimore medical campus into a medical center where the most modern of buildings sit among the most historic including one of the largest hospital construction projects in the nation — two new state-of-the-art hospitals for adult and pediatric patients. Other campus construction projects completed include: clinical and research buildings for the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Broadway Research Building, the Anne and Mike Armstrong Medical Educational Building, and the new Robert H. and Clarice Smith Building that is part of the Wilmer Eye Institute. An anesthesiologist who has authored or co-authored more than 150 scientific papers, abstracts and book chapters, Dr. Miller joined Johns Hopkins in 1994 as professor and director of the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine.
Mathias W. Samuel, J.D.
Samuel has an extensive background in business, technology and IP law. He retired from the Minneapolis office of Fish & Richardson, the world’s largest intellectual property law firm, after a 25-year career leading and successfully trying patent and technology cases in venues around the country. He has extensive experience on patent matters including due diligence, freedom to operate, and strategic portfolio development. He also has substantial experience working with start-up and early stage technology companies, especially in the medical device space. He is also a member of an angel investment group based in Minneapolis and regularly evaluates and considers investments in Midwestern start-ups. Mr. Samuel has also served on the board of directors of a number of non-profit organizations.
Stephen Schaefer, J.D.
With a background in intellectual property and technology company development, Mr. Schaefer is a consultant and advisor to early stage medical technology companies and in that role helps his clients in all aspects of their business and technology development. Previously, he was a principal at Fish & Richardson PC in its Minneapolis office, where he served large and small technology companies for 22 years and chaired the firm’s medical device practice group. He received his law degree from the University of Minnesota (1992) and has additional degrees in electrical engineering (University of Kentucky, 1985) and engineering management (University of Dayton, 1995). Mr. Schaefer’s expertise includes patent portfolio strategy, development and enforcement, with the benefit of having worked as a full-time patent litigator early in his legal career. He also has a strong background in corporate finance and fundraising, where he has considerable experience representing venture groups with their investments.