Board of Directors
Ian Read
Chairman
Ian Read began his career at Pfizer in 1978 and was named CEO in 2010 and Chairman of the Pfizer Board of Directors in 2011. During Read’s tenure as CEO, Pfizer generated a total shareholder return of 250%, achieved 32 FDA approvals for new medicines, invested significantly in R&D, and completed several transformational transactions to help strengthen Pfizer’s pipeline. Previously, Read served as Senior Vice President and Group President of Pfizer’s Worldwide Biopharmaceutical Businesses, overseeing five global business units: Primary Care, Specialty Care, Oncology, Established Products and Emerging Markets. Prior to which, Read held positions in several of the company’s largest, fastest-growing operations, including Chief Financial Officer, Pfizer Mexico, and Country Manager, Pfizer Brazil. Read continues to serve on the board of directors of Kimberly-Clark and Viatris.
Jeff Margolis
Vice Chairman
Jeff Margolis is widely recognized as a healthcare IT entrepreneur and innovator based on his 30-year track record of successfully applying technologies to address the complex problems facing the healthcare industry. Leveraging his deep systematic understanding of healthcare and groundbreaking architectural and integration methodologies, Jeff has built some of the nation’s largest and most innovative healthcare technology and service organizations. Jeff is currently Chairman and CEO of Welltok, Inc., where he is driving the transformation of our current sickcare system to one of optimized health. Prior to Welltok, Jeff founded TriZetto, the first industry vertical SaaS enterprise solution, and originated the concept of Integrated Healthcare Management. During his tenure as Chairman and CEO, Jeff led TriZetto through a successful IPO and $1.4B private equity buyout. Jeff currently serves as a member of the board of directors for Quality Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:QSII), Alignment Healthcare and TriNetX. Jeff also serves the national and local communities on the boards of several prominent non-profit and for profit organizations, including Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach and the University of California at Irvine Center for Digital Transformation. As a health futurist and visionary, Jeff is a frequent speaker, guest lecturer and author of two books, including The Healthcare Cure. Jeff is an alumnus of the University of Illinois and holds certified public accountant certificates in Colorado and Illinois.
Gadi Lachman
Board Member
Gadi Lachman previously held leadership positions at TriZetto, American Well and Eliza. He was also at Lehman Brothers and was an Officer in Israeli Special Forces. Gadi earned his MBA at Harvard Business School, and his LLB in law and B.C. in accounting from Tel-Aviv University.
Joe Bress
Board Member
Joe Bress is a Managing Director at The Carlyle Group focused on private equity opportunities in the health care sector. He is based in New York. Since joining Carlyle in 2007, Mr. Bress has been involved in investing and managing more than $4 billion of equity investments into health care companies globally. He currently sits on the board of directors of TriNetX, PPD, WellDyneRx, Albany Molecular Research, Corro Health, and Millicent Pharma. He is also involved in Carlyle’s investments in Rede D’Or Sao Luiz and Grand Rounds. He was previously involved in Carlyle’s realized investments in X-Chem and Visionary RCM. Prior to Carlyle, he worked in the mergers and acquisitions group at UBS. Mr. Bress received an MBA from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and an AB from Harvard College, where he graduated magna cum laude.
Leslie Henshaw
Board Member
As a Partner on the Private Transactions team at Deerfield, Leslie works with a variety of healthcare services and healthcare information technology companies that are both current and potential investment partners. Before joining Deerfield in 2005, Leslie was co-manager of an ING branded healthcare hedge fund she launched in 2000. Prior to that she spent 11 years in the investment banking, high yield research and equity research departments at Furman Selz and ING, where she focused exclusively on companies in the healthcare arena. In these roles Leslie developed wide ranging experience in executing M&A transactions, structuring debt and equity financings for both public and private companies and analyzing company potential through the lens of public investors. She also spent two years as a member of the national healthcare consulting practice of Price Waterhouse. Leslie graduated with High Honors from Wesleyan University, and she earned her M.B.A. from the University of Chicago. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of five Deerfield portfolio companies.
Anshul Thakral
Board Member
Anshul has over 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries as a general manager, management consultant, commercial leader and entrepreneur. Anshul is the Chief Executive Officer of Launch Therapeutics (“Launch Tx”), a development stage biotech company. Prior to joining Launch Tx, he served as Chief Commercial Officer and Executive Vice President of Peri- and Post-Approval Services at PPD. He started his career at PPD as Global Head of PPD Biotech and under his leadership PPD became a market leader for CRO services in the biotech segment. Before PPD, Anshul ran the global life sciences business unit at Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG), where he created a customer business model to serve the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Prior to GLG, he worked at McKinsey & Company, where he was an associate principal in the healthcare practice, counseling senior management and CEOs of global pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies on critical topics including growth, strategy, research and development, business development, go-to-market approaches, and commercial models. Anshul began his career as an engineer and researcher, earning undergraduate and master’s degrees in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins University. He also earned an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He leverages his passion for scientific research, and his expertise in entrepreneurship and business strategy, to drive the growth and success of many areas of our business.
Luna Yang
Board Member
Luna Yang is a Principal at The Carlyle Group focused on private equity investments in the healthcare sector. Since joining Carlyle in 2017, Ms. Yang has been involved in a number of investments including Included Health, One Medical, TriNetX, Saama, and WellDyne. She is based in New York. Prior to joining Carlyle, Ms. Yang worked at Golden Gate Capital in San Francisco at McKinsey & Co in New York. She received her M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.S. from Stanford University.
Naoki Aoyama
Board Observer
Naoki Aoyama is a Senior Vice President of Wellness Business Division at Mitsui & Co. (U.S.A.), Inc., overseeing the management and investment of Mitsui’s wellness, healthcare, and life sciences business in the US with more than 20 years of significant global experience in the industry. Currently serving as a director of the board of Mitsui’s subsidiaries in the healthcare staffing and HCIT businesses in the US, he represented Mitsui on the boards of various public/private companies, such as MED3OOO, Fuji Pharma, San Li, PharmaLogicals Research, MIMS, IMU, and Parkway Pantai, among others; and played instrumental roles in strategization, origination, evaluation, execution and management of Mitsui’s successful investments in early-to-mature stage businesses including but not limited to Quintiles Transnational/Japan, NovaQuest Capital Management, SomaLogic, IHH Healthcare, Colombia Asia, Keimed, Sogo Medical. Naoki received his Bachelor of Business Administration & Commerce from Keio University.
Joseph B Volpe
Board Observer
Joe has more than two decades of experience in health care investing applying a technical engineering background coupled with an understanding of emerging technologies. He is considered to be one of the industry’s leading corporate investors. In 2016, Joe was named by Global Corporate Venturing as one of the top five rising stars.
Joe currently holds board seats with TriNetX, Prognos, Preventice, ClearDATA and Exostar. Previously he sat on the boards with Koneksa, Mihealth and exited Aptus Health and Liaison. Joe was observer on Humedica and Healthsense. Joe chairs several M&A and Audit committee positions while holding current board seats.
Colleagues have called Joe instrumental in transforming Merck GHIF from a leader, not only in venture capital, but also in growth equity and M&A. He earned industry laurels when he participated in the sale of Humedica, a healthcare analytics company, to UnitedHealth Group in 2013, a transaction that produced a 17-fold return.
In addition to his success with Humedica, Joe has led investments and acquisitions in companies such as TriNetX, Liaison, Preventice, Physicians Interactive, Koneksa, Prognos, WellDoc, Exostar, Milheath and ClearDATA. He has evaluated thousands of digital health companies and has invested in two to three companies annually since 2011. During that same period, he has also managed 50-plus transactions at Merck, all at various stages of maturity.
Another notable success for Joe was his leadership with Preventice to further develop its remote care monitoring platform for cardiac arrhythmia patients. Joe led the Merck strategy and merger of Preventice with eCardio and eventually sold a portion of the combined company to a leading healthcare channel partner, which paid back the fund for the original investment while maintaining majority share of a more valued company. Joe also focused on the patient physician engagement space with his Physicians Interactive (now called Aptus) investments. He eventually led the acquisition of the company on behalf of Merck GHIF. Joe also led the acquisitions of MedHelp, Quantia MD and Tomorrow Networks within Aptus.
Joe came to Merck from Johnson and Johnson where he spent more than 20 years in innovation and investment roles across Consumer, Pharma and Device sectors of J&J. Prior to that he was a consultant with EDS where he was selected and graduated from their Top Gun business and technology program. He went to the University of South Florida where he obtained a degree in Business/Information Systems and Engineering.