Joshua R. Lamstein is our Chairman and a director. Mr. Lamstein is also Vice Chairman of HCFP and Co-Chairman and Co-Managing Partner of HCFP/Capital Partners. HCFP/Capital Partners is a co-founder of Scopus. Mr. Lamstein is also a senior officer and/or director of other portfolio companies of HCFP and a Venture Partner of an approximately $100 million seed-stage venture fund. Mr. Lamstein has worked in venture capital and private equity for over 20 years, including as a Managing Director of GF Capital Private Equity Fund, a $240 million middle market private equity fund, and as a Partner of LMS Capital, a FTSE 250 London Stock Exchange-listed investment trust. Mr. Lamstein initiated the trust’s presence in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. He began his career in private equity at Apollo Advisors, a global alternative investment manager now known as Apollo Global Management, Inc. Prior thereto he was an investment banker in New York and London at Lehman Brothers.
Mr. Lamstein is also a Senior Advisor to John Snow, Inc. and JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc., a non-profit global public health management consulting and research organization dedicated to improving the health of individuals and communities throughout the world. Mr. Lamstein is also on the Board of Trustees of World Education, Inc., a non-profit organization that provides training and technical assistance in literacy, health and HIV and AIDS education around the world.
Mr. Lamstein received his B.A., with honors, from Colgate University and his M.B.A. from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Robert J. Gibson, CFA is our Vice Chairman and a director. Mr. Gibson is also Executive Vice President of HCFP and Co-Chairman of HCFP/Capital Markets LLC, a middle-market investment bank. Mr. Gibson is highly experienced in investment banking and private equity, with a particular emphasis on biopharmaceutical, biotechnology, specialty pharmaceutical and other healthcare companies. Previously Mr. Gibson was a Senior Vice President – Investment Banking at CRT Capital Group LLC, a middle market investment bank, and a Senior Vice President at Balance Point Capital Partners, a middle market private equity fund. Mr. Gibson began his career in healthcare investment banking at Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc.
Mr. Gibson is a Chartered Financial Analyst. Mr. Gibson received his B.A., magna cum laude, from Amherst College.
Ira Scott Greenspan is a Senior Advisor, director, and Chairman of our Executive Committee. Mr. Greenspan is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of HCFP and Co-Chairman and Co-Managing Partner of HCFP/Capital Partners, and certain other affiliates of HCFP. Each of HCFP and Mr. Greenspan is a co-founder of Scopus. For more than 25 years, Mr. Greenspan has been a senior executive, partner and/or director of HCFP and its predecessors and related entities, including having served as Chairman and Co-Managing Partner of HCFP/Brenner Equity Partners, the indirect majority shareholder of HCFP/Brenner Securities LLC, a middle market investment bank originally founded by former senior executives and directors of Drexel Burnham Lambert. Mr. Greenspan has been chairman and/or a member of the board of directors of numerous public and private companies. For more than five years prior to entering the financial services industry, Mr. Greenspan was a corporate and securities lawyer at leading New York law firms, including as a Partner of the New York predecessor of Blank Rome. He began his law career at the New York predecessor of Sidley Austin.
Mr. Greenspan received his B.A., with high distinction, from Harpur College/Binghamton University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Pi Sigma Alpha. Mr. Greenspan received his J.D. from New York University School of Law, where he was on the Editorial Board of the Annual Survey of American Law, an honorary law journal.
David A. Buckel, CMA is a director nominee. Since 2007, Mr. Buckel has served as President and Managing Director of BVI Venture Services, an outsourced provider of financial, accounting, management and other professional services to private and small public companies. Mr. Buckel serves as a director of SharpSpring, Inc. (Nasdaq: “SHSP”), a publicly-traded cloud-based marketing technology company, head of the audit committee and a member of the nominating and corporate governance committees. Previously, Mr. Buckel served as Chief Financial Officer of Internap Network Services Corporation (Nasdaq: “INAP”), a publicly-traded IT infrastructure services company, and also served as an officer and/or director of numerous additional private and Nasdaq-listed public companies.
Mr. Buckel received his B.S. in Accounting from Canisius College and his M.B.A. from the Syracuse University Martin J. Whitman School of Management. Mr. Buckel is a Certified Management Accountant.
Raphael (Rafi) Hofstein, Ph.D. is a director nominee. Dr. Hofstein has broad experience across multiple scientific and medical sectors. Dr. Hofstein has been a founder, member of the founding team, senior officer, chairman and/or director of numerous private and public biopharmaceutical, biotechnology, pharmaceutical and other medical technology companies.
From 2009 to March 2020, Dr. Hofstein was President and Chief Executive Officer of Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners, or TIAP. TIAP, formerly named MaRS Innovation, is a consortium of leading universities, teaching hospitals and other institutions and research institutes with the mandate of identifying life sciences and other technology research from within the consortium and investing in newly-created or other early-stage ventures organized to advance and commercialize scientific breakthroughs. Industry partners of TIAP include Amgen, Baxter, GlaxoSmithKlein, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer and Takeda. Over 50 new life sciences and other healthcare-related companies were launched and/or financed during Dr. Hofstein’s tenure with TIAP.
For approximately 20 years prior to joining TIAP, Dr. Hofstein was President and Chief Executive Officer of Hadasit Ltd., the technology transfer company of Hadassah University Hospital, the teaching hospital of Hebrew University, during which time he founded and was chairman of Hadasit Bio-Holdings Ltd., a then publicly-traded holding company for private and publicly-traded biopharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
Dr. Hofstein is currently a director of BioLineRx Ltd. (Nasdaq: “BRLX”) and has been a founder, senior executive, chairman and/or director of numerous TIAP portfolio companies, including Fibrocor Therapeutics, Inc., a private biotechnology company targeting fibrotic diseases; Encycle Therapeutics Inc., a private biotechnology company which was acquired for consideration of up to approximately $80 million in 2019 by Zealand Pharma A/S (Nasdaq: “ZEAL”), a publicly-traded biotechnology company; Notch Therapeutics Inc., a private biotechnology company focused on gene-edited T cell therapies, which has a strategic partnership with Allogene Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: “ALLO”), a publicly-traded biotechnology company; and Triphase Accelerator, a private Toronto-based drug development company which entered into a strategic partnership with Celgene relating to early-stage oncology assets.
Dr. Hofstein has also been an officer, director and/or advisor of numerous not-for-profit life sciences-related entities, including the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine, or CCRM, a public/private consortium supporting the development of gene and cell therapies and regenerative medicine, and co-founded the Israel Life Science Industry Organization, or ILSI, and the Israel Tech Transfer Network, or ITTN, both private organizations seeking to advance the life sciences sector in Israel.
Dr. Hofstein received his B.Sc. in Chemistry and Physics from Hebrew University and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Life Sciences and Chemistry from the Weizmann Institute of Science. Dr. Hofstein was awarded the Chaim Weizmann Post-Doctoral Fellowship and the Hereditary Disease Foundation Fellowship while completing his postdoctoral training and research in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School.
David Weild IV is a Senior Advisor to us and a director nominee. For more than 15 years, Mr. Weild has been Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Weild & Co., a boutique investment bank focused on emerging growth companies. During this period, Mr. Weild also served concurrently as Senior Advisor – Capital Markets for Grant Thornton, a global public accounting firm. Previously, Mr. Weild was Vice Chairman of Nasdaq and served as a member of Nasdaq’s Executive Committee.
For more than 13 years prior to joining Nasdaq, Mr. Weild was an executive of Prudential Securities Inc., including Head of Corporate Finance, Head of the Global Equities Transaction Group and President of Prudentialsecurities.com. Mr. Weild is a director of PAVmed Inc. (Nasdaq: “PAVM”) and BioSig Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: “BSGM”), both medical technology companies.
Mr. Weild is a recognized expert on capital formation and capital markets structure and co-authored a number of definitive white papers that were key catalysts for new legislation and regulatory reforms, including the JOBS Act.
Mr. Weild received his B.A. from Wesleyan University and M.B.A. from New York University Stern School of Business. Mr. Weild also studied at the Sorbonne, Ecoles des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC Paris) and the Stockholm School of Economics.
Joshua R. Lamstein is our Chairman and a director. Mr. Lamstein is also Vice Chairman of HCFP and Co-Chairman and Co-Managing Partner of HCFP/Capital Partners. HCFP/Capital Partners is a co-founder of Scopus. Mr. Lamstein is also a senior officer and/or director of other portfolio companies of HCFP and a Venture Partner of an approximately $100 million seed-stage venture fund. Mr. Lamstein has worked in venture capital and private equity for over 20 years, including as a Managing Director of GF Capital Private Equity Fund, a $240 million middle market private equity fund, and as a Partner of LMS Capital, a FTSE 250 London Stock Exchange-listed investment trust. Mr. Lamstein initiated the trust’s presence in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. He began his career in private equity at Apollo Advisors, a global alternative investment manager now known as Apollo Global Management, Inc. Prior thereto he was an investment banker in New York and London at Lehman Brothers.
Mr. Lamstein is also a Senior Advisor to John Snow, Inc. and JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc., a non-profit global public health management consulting and research organization dedicated to improving the health of individuals and communities throughout the world. Mr. Lamstein is also on the Board of Trustees of World Education, Inc., a non-profit organization that provides training and technical assistance in literacy, health and HIV and AIDS education around the world.
Mr. Lamstein received his B.A., with honors, from Colgate University and his M.B.A. from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Robert J. Gibson, CFA is our Vice Chairman and a director. Mr. Gibson is also Executive Vice President of HCFP and Co-Chairman of HCFP/Capital Markets LLC, a middle-market investment bank. Mr. Gibson is highly experienced in investment banking and private equity, with a particular emphasis on biopharmaceutical, biotechnology, specialty pharmaceutical and other healthcare companies. Previously Mr. Gibson was a Senior Vice President – Investment Banking at CRT Capital Group LLC, a middle market investment bank, and a Senior Vice President at Balance Point Capital Partners, a middle market private equity fund. Mr. Gibson began his career in healthcare investment banking at Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc.
Mr. Gibson is a Chartered Financial Analyst. Mr. Gibson received his B.A., magna cum laude, from Amherst College.
Ira Scott Greenspan is a Senior Advisor, director, and Chairman of our Executive Committee. Mr. Greenspan is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of HCFP and Co-Chairman and Co-Managing Partner of HCFP/Capital Partners, and certain other affiliates of HCFP. Each of HCFP and Mr. Greenspan is a co-founder of Scopus. For more than 25 years, Mr. Greenspan has been a senior executive, partner and/or director of HCFP and its predecessors and related entities, including having served as Chairman and Co-Managing Partner of HCFP/Brenner Equity Partners, the indirect majority shareholder of HCFP/Brenner Securities LLC, a middle market investment bank originally founded by former senior executives and directors of Drexel Burnham Lambert. Mr. Greenspan has been chairman and/or a member of the board of directors of numerous public and private companies. For more than five years prior to entering the financial services industry, Mr. Greenspan was a corporate and securities lawyer at leading New York law firms, including as a Partner of the New York predecessor of Blank Rome. He began his law career at the New York predecessor of Sidley Austin.
Mr. Greenspan received his B.A., with high distinction, from Harpur College/Binghamton University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Pi Sigma Alpha. Mr. Greenspan received his J.D. from New York University School of Law, where he was on the Editorial Board of the Annual Survey of American Law, an honorary law journal.
David S. Battleman, M.D. is a Senior Advisor to us and a director nominee. Since 2012, Dr. Battleman has served as the Founding Principal of TrueNorth Lifesciences, which provides strategic consulting and financial advisory services relating principally to drug development, acceleration, optimization and commercialization for early-stage life sciences companies. Dr. Battleman was previously a Senior Principal in the research and development and commercial strategy practice at IMS Health Holdings, Inc., a Fortune 500 company providing data and consulting services to the pharmaceutical industry. Prior to joining IMS Health, Dr. Battleman was a Consultant in the healthcare practice of Bain & Company, a leading management consulting firm, and a Director at Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: “PFE”), one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies with responsibility for value-based product strategies for various early-stage and established pharmaceutical products. Dr. Battleman was also an Assistant Professor at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. Dr. Battleman is a director of PAVmed Inc. (Nasdaq: “PAVM”), a publicly-traded medical device company.
Dr. Battleman received his B.A. in Biology from The Johns Hopkins University, his M.D. from the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, his MSc. from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and his M.B.A. from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
David A. Buckel, CMA is a director nominee. Since 2007, Mr. Buckel has served as President and Managing Director of BVI Venture Services, an outsourced provider of financial, accounting, management and other professional services to private and small public companies. Mr. Buckel serves as a director of SharpSpring, Inc. (Nasdaq: “SHSP”), a publicly-traded cloud-based marketing technology company, head of the audit committee and a member of the nominating and corporate governance committees. Previously, Mr. Buckel served as Chief Financial Officer of Internap Network Services Corporation (Nasdaq: “INAP”), a publicly-traded IT infrastructure services company, and also served as an officer and/or director of numerous additional private and Nasdaq-listed public companies.
Mr. Buckel received his B.S. in Accounting from Canisius College and his M.B.A. from the Syracuse University Martin J. Whitman School of Management. Mr. Buckel is a Certified Management Accountant.
Raphael (Rafi) Hofstein, Ph.D. is a director nominee. Dr. Hofstein has broad experience across multiple scientific and medical sectors. Dr. Hofstein has been a founder, member of the founding team, senior officer, chairman and/or director of numerous private and public biopharmaceutical, biotechnology, pharmaceutical and other medical technology companies.
From 2009 to March 2020, Dr. Hofstein was President and Chief Executive Officer of Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners, or TIAP. TIAP, formerly named MaRS Innovation, is a consortium of leading universities, teaching hospitals and other institutions and research institutes with the mandate of identifying life sciences and other technology research from within the consortium and investing in newly-created or other early-stage ventures organized to advance and commercialize scientific breakthroughs. Industry partners of TIAP include Amgen, Baxter, GlaxoSmithKlein, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer and Takeda. Over 50 new life sciences and other healthcare-related companies were launched and/or financed during Dr. Hofstein’s tenure with TIAP.
For approximately 20 years prior to joining TIAP, Dr. Hofstein was President and Chief Executive Officer of Hadasit Ltd., the technology transfer company of Hadassah University Hospital, the teaching hospital of Hebrew University, during which time he founded and was chairman of Hadasit Bio-Holdings Ltd., a then publicly-traded holding company for private and publicly-traded biopharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
Dr. Hofstein is currently a director of BioLineRx Ltd. (Nasdaq: “BRLX”) and has been a founder, senior executive, chairman and/or director of numerous TIAP portfolio companies, including Fibrocor Therapeutics, Inc., a private biotechnology company targeting fibrotic diseases; Encycle Therapeutics Inc., a private biotechnology company which was acquired for consideration of up to approximately $80 million in 2019 by Zealand Pharma A/S (Nasdaq: “ZEAL”), a publicly-traded biotechnology company; Notch Therapeutics Inc., a private biotechnology company focused on gene-edited T cell therapies, which has a strategic partnership with Allogene Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: “ALLO”), a publicly-traded biotechnology company; and Triphase Accelerator, a private Toronto-based drug development company which entered into a strategic partnership with Celgene relating to early-stage oncology assets.
Dr. Hofstein has also been an officer, director and/or advisor of numerous not-for-profit life sciences-related entities, including the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine, or CCRM, a public/private consortium supporting the development of gene and cell therapies and regenerative medicine, and co-founded the Israel Life Science Industry Organization, or ILSI, and the Israel Tech Transfer Network, or ITTN, both private organizations seeking to advance the life sciences sector in Israel.
Dr. Hofstein received his B.Sc. in Chemistry and Physics from Hebrew University and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Life Sciences and Chemistry from the Weizmann Institute of Science. Dr. Hofstein was awarded the Chaim Weizmann Post-Doctoral Fellowship and the Hereditary Disease Foundation Fellowship while completing his postdoctoral training and research in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School.
Paul E. Hopper is a director. Mr. Hopper is a highly accomplished biotechnology and biopharmaceutical investor and entrepreneur. Mr. Hopper is also currently Executive Chairman of Imugene Limited, a clinical-stage immuno-oncology company publicly-traded on the Australian Securities Exchange, or ASX (ASX: “IMU”). Previously, Mr. Hopper was Executive Chairman of Viralytics Ltd., an immuno-oncology company targeting treatments for metastatic melanoma and other cancers, which was publicly-traded on the ASX prior to the company’s sale to Merck & Co. (NYSE: “MRK”) in 2018 for A$502 million (or approximately US$394 million at the time of sale). Mr. Hopper is Chairman of the Life Sciences Portfolio Managers Trust.
Mr. Hopper received a B.A. from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and has completed several Advanced Management Programs at Harvard Business School.
Ashish P. Sanghrajka is our President and a director. For more than 25 years prior to joining us, Mr. Sanghrajka was an investment banker across multiple sectors, with a particular concentration in biotechnology, biopharmaceuticals and pharmaceuticals. Most recently, Mr. Sanghrajka was Managing Director — Equity Capital Markets, at Mizuho Securities USA LLC, the U.S. capital markets affiliate of one of the world’s largest financial institutions. Previously, Mr. Sanghrajka was the Managing Partner of BIO-IB, a boutique investment bank specializing in licensing/partnering and mergers and acquisitions for emerging private and publicly-held healthcare companies. Mr. Sanghrajka began his career as an investment banker specializing in healthcare and other growth sectors at ABN Amro Rothschild (including predecessors ING Barings and Furman Selz).
Mr. Sanghrajka has served as a board member of numerous private and public companies and non-profit organizations.
Mr. Sanghrajka received his B.S. in Engineering and Applied Sciences from the University of Rochester and his Certificate in Finance from the University Rochester Simon Business School.
David Weild IV is a Senior Advisor to us and a director nominee. For more than 15 years, Mr. Weild has been Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Weild & Co., a boutique investment bank focused on emerging growth companies. During this period, Mr. Weild also served concurrently as Senior Advisor – Capital Markets for Grant Thornton, a global public accounting firm. Previously, Mr. Weild was Vice Chairman of Nasdaq and served as a member of Nasdaq’s Executive Committee.
For more than 13 years prior to joining Nasdaq, Mr. Weild was an executive of Prudential Securities Inc., including Head of Corporate Finance, Head of the Global Equities Transaction Group and President of Prudentialsecurities.com. Mr. Weild is a director of PAVmed Inc. (Nasdaq: “PAVM”) and BioSig Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: “BSGM”), both medical technology companies.
Mr. Weild is a recognized expert on capital formation and capital markets structure and co-authored a number of definitive white papers that were key catalysts for new legislation and regulatory reforms, including the JOBS Act.
Mr. Weild received his B.A. from Wesleyan University and M.B.A. from New York University Stern School of Business. Mr. Weild also studied at the Sorbonne, Ecoles des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC Paris) and the Stockholm School of Economics.