Advisors
Earl Collier, Jr., Executive Vice President, Genzyme Corporation
As an Executive Vice President, Duke Collier managed and built several of Genzyme's newer businesses, including its oncology and cardiovascular business units. He also was responsible for building the biosurgery business and oversees the company's efforts in multiple sclerosis and other immune disorders. He has also led some of Genzyme's significant acquisitions and the formation of MG Biotherapeutics, Genzyme's joint venture with Medtronic Inc., which is focused on cardiac cell therapy. Mr. Collier joined Genzyme full time in 1997, but his relationship with the company dates to 1990, when he began working with Genzyme as a strategic advisor, and in which role he continues.
Mr. Collier has more than 30 years of experience in healthcare. From 1991-1995, he was president of Vitas Healthcare Corp., the largest provider of hospice services in the United States. Between 1981 and 1991, Mr. Collier was a partner at Hogan & Hartson law firm in Washington, D.C. He served as deputy administrator for the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) in Baltimore, MD, during the Carter Administration. From 1977 to 1979, Mr. Collier was deputy administrator of the New York State offices of Health Systems Management. He was an associate at Covington and Burlington law firm in Washington, D.C., from 1974 to 1977. Mr. Collier began his legal career in Washington as a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals.
Mr. Collier sits on the boards of Newton-Wellesley Hospital, Pervasis Therapeutics, and Beacon Hospice, and is a member of the Director's Council of the MIT Center for Cancer Research. He is also a Senior Advisor to Polaris Venture Partners. He earned a B.A. at Yale University and a J.D. at the University of Virginia Law School.
Peter Barton Hutt, Senior Counsel, Covington & Burling LLP
Peter Barton Hutt is a Partner specializing in food and drug law in the Washington, D.C. law firm of Covington & Burling. He served as Chief Counsel for the FDA from 1971-1975 and is the co-author of a casebook used to teach food and drug law throughout the country.
Mr. Hutt currently serves on the Boards of Directors of several public and privately-held biotechnology companies, including CV Therapeutics, Inc. and Cognetix, Inc., and venture capital advisory boards, including Polaris Venture Partners and the Sprout Group. He has previously served as a director of other companies, including IDEC Pharmaceuticals Corporation (now Biogen IDEC Inc.) during its development of Rituxan®.
Mr. Hutt has served on many advisory committees including the Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the NIH Advisory Committee to Review the Guidelines for Recombinant DNA Research, and five Office of Technology Assessment advisory panels.
Washingtonian magazine has named Mr. Hutt one of Washington D.C.'s 50 best lawyers (out of more than 40,000) and one of Washington D.C.'s 100 most influential people. The National Law Journal has named him one of the 40 best health care lawyers in the United States and the European Counsel has called him the best FDA regulatory specialist in Washington, D.C. Mr. Hutt graduated from Yale University and Harvard Law School and earned a Master of Laws degree in Food and Drug Law from New York University Law School.
Michael A. Mussallem, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Edwards Lifesciences
Michael A. Mussallem, age 56, has been chairman and CEO of Edwards Lifesciences, Inc. since 2000. Prior to 2000, Mussallem held a variety of positions with increasing responsibility in engineering, product development and senior management at Baxter International Inc., including Group Vice President of its CardioVascular business from 1994 to 2000 and Group Vice President of the Biopharmaceutical business from 1998 to 2000. From 1996 until 1998, he was the Chairman of Baxter's Asia Board overseeing Baxter's operations throughout Asia. Mr. Mussallem is chairman of the board of directors of the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed), and serves as a member of the board for Advanced Medical Optics. He is also on the boards and executive committees of the California Healthcare Institute and OCTANe, and is a trustee of the University of California, Irvine Foundation. He received a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering in 1974 and an honorary doctorate in 1999 from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana.
Stephen N. Oesterle, MD, Senior Vice President of Medicine and Technology, Medtronic
Stephen Oesterle, M.D., joined Medtronic in 2002 as Senior Vice President for Medicine and Technology. In this role, Steve provides executive leadership for scientific research, technological strategies and continued development of strong relationships with the world's medical communities, technical universities, financial institutions and emerging medical device companies.
Previously, Steve served as Associate Professor of Medicine at the Harvard University Medical School and as Director of Invasive Cardiology Services at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. A teacher and innovator in the field of cardiac catheterization, he has also directed interventional cardiology programs at Good Samaritan Hospital, Los Angeles, at Georgetown University, and Stanford University.
Steve is a 1973 summa cum laude graduate of Harvard College and received his medical doctorate from Yale University in 1977. He completed his internship and residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and also served a fellowship in interventional cardiology at Stanford.
Doug Rasor, President, Rasor Advisors
Mr. Rasor has over 30 years' experience in technology startups and the semiconductor businesses. His current company, Rasor Advisors, works with startup companies and venture capital firms to develop marketing and funding strategies. He is recently retired from a 25+ year career at Texas Instruments where he was Vice President, Emerging Medical Technologies. In this role, Mr. Rasor was responsible for establishing relationships with universities, venture capital investors and innovative start-up companies in the medical device sector.
From 1995-2005, Mr. Rasor was Vice President of Strategic Marketing at Texas Instruments. In this role, he ran an organization responsible for scouting, and incubating TI's entrance into new high-growth markets. Examples of successful businesses that were bootstrapped through Doug's strategic marketing organization were TI's chipset businesses for MP3 players, digital still cameras, digital audio, wireless smartphone/PDA, and DSL modems. These businesses employ over 3,000 people and account for over 20% of TI's revenue today. He was also responsible for spearheading TI's external venture fund activities (partnerships with Granite Ventures, Seven Rosen, Austin Ventures, STARTech, etc).
Previous experiences include multiple field sales and business unit marketing assignments at TI, as well as sales and marketing management roles at Sierra Semiconductor. Before his entry into the semiconductor industry, Doug was director of engineering at SIMUTECH where he led the development of real-time simulation hardware/software for the avionics network on the F-16 fighter aircraft.
Mr. Rasor obtained his degree in Systems Engineering from Wright State University, with postgraduate work in Computer Science.