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Scott A. Elster
Chief Executive Officer
Mr. Elster has over 20 years of experience in the biosciences and financial sectors. His experience encompasses planning, finance and strategy development, supply chain, and operations. Most recently, Mr. Elster was director of operations and supply chain at Clinical Micro Sensors (CMS)- a Motorola Company. There, Mr. Elster successfully prepared operations for the company’s first commercial launch, including FDA approval of the GMP manufacturing facility. He led the quality control function, the manufacturing team and operational strategy development. His team was also responsible for materials and inventory management, as well as distribution and warehousing.
For over 13 years at Baxter, Mr. Elster’s management work was focused directly on plasma products worldwide. His roles included manager of strategic planning, business development, finance and strategy for the hyperimmune business unit, and director of global supply chain. Mr. Elster began his career at Deloitte and Touche as a financial statement auditor. He is a board member and past chairman of the board for Monrovia Growers.
Mr. Elster received his Bachelor of Science from California State University, Northridge, and his Master of Business from the Anderson Graduate School of Management at University of California at Los Angeles.
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Scott Eaker
VP, Quality
Mr. Eaker is responsible for quality management and laboratory operations for Prolacta Bioscience. He has over a decade of experience in quality and laboratory management in the bioscience sector. Mr. Eaker began his career in the microbiology laboratory at Baxter Healthcare’s first recombinant Factor VIII manufacturing facility. He supported the start-up of the bulk manufacturing and fill/finish operations, implemented numerous test protocols, led failure investigations, and rapidly became a supervisor of laboratory operations.
Mr. Eaker also held a role serving as the subject matter expert in the areas of microbiology and aseptic processing for Baxter’s Bioscience Division. In this position he was responsible for developing and deploying standardized quality systems across multiple biologic and medical device manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and Europe. Mr. Eaker has also been responsible for quality in the plasma fractionation area and ultimately served as director of quality technical support for the Bioscience division.
Mr. Eaker received a Bachelor of Science degree in microbiology from the University of California at Davis.
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Joseph Fournell
VP, Operations
Mr. Fournell has over a decade of experience in the field of operations and supply chain management in the high-tech and bioscience sectors. Throughout his career, he has held leadership roles in operations, manufacturing execution systems, forecasting, supply planning, process engineering, and logistics.
Most recently, Mr. Fournell served as director of global logistics for Baxter Bioscience. In this capacity, Mr. Fournell managed the transportation, warehousing, and distribution of over $3 billion of product globally. At Baxter Bioscience, he led strategy planning sessions for operations, regulatory, and human resources. In his prior role at Baxter Bioscience, he became the first certified Six Sigma Black Belt in the U.S., working on process improvements in the manufacturing and supply chain arena.
Mr. Fournell received a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, with an emphasis on process engineering. He also received a Master of Science degree in Industrial Engineering at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, with a focus on factory automation, funded from a grant through NASA-AMES and Raytheon.
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Nathen Fox, CPA/MBA
Chief Financial Officer
Mr. Fox is an operations-oriented CFO/CPA with over 21 years of experience in more than six start-ups, taking several of them from inception through revenues and profitability. Prior to joining Prolacta, Mr. Fox was senior director/CFO of The Nanotech Company and CFO of Gematria Products, Inc.
Mr. Fox worked in Japan for IMAGICA Corporation (Asia’s largest post-production company) where he was general manager of three business units where he became conversant in Japanese. He was also CFO for Porsche Design and a CPA at Barkin, Perren & Elam. Mr. Fox holds a Master of Business Administration from the Anderson School at University of California at Los Angeles with an undergraduate degree in business economics from University of California at Los Angeles.
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Alan Kofsky
VP, Sales & Marketing
Mr. Kofsky began his 22 year career working for Mead Johnson’s Infant Nutritional Division. He has held senior sales and marketing positions at both start-up and turnaround companies, as well as at companies in rapid growth circumstances. As vice-president of sales at Whatman, Inc., Mr. Kofsky led three business units, Bioscience, OEM and Distributor Sales, and was instrumental in reviving the struggling microarray business.
Prior to Whatman, Mr. Kofsky spent 13 years at Baxter Healthcare where he held senior sales and marketing positions in the BioScience Division. He led the successful global launch of Gammagard S/D which is a biologic that is used to treat numerous immune disorders. He also directed the launch of Tisseel VH, a product used in the operating room for hemostasis, sealing, and gluing. Additionally, Mr. Kofsky served in a vital leadership role for the successful development of Baxter’s BioSurgery Division which sells and markets a variety of biologics for the hospital operating room.
Mr. Kofsky received his Master of Business Administration from Adelphi University in New York and received his undergraduate degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
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Martin L. Lee, Ph.D.
Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Lee is responsible for all research and development activities as well as the regulatory compliance function.
He is also Adjunct Professor in the School of Public Health at UCLA and Adjunct Professor of Internal Medicine, Charles R. Drew University of Science and Medicine. Dr. Lee is the author or co-author of over 200 scientific papers. He is a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and member of the American Statistical Association, the Society for Clinical Trials, the Biometrics Society, and the international Society of Thrombosis and Hemostasis.
Dr. Lee received a Bachelor of Arts (1974) degree in mathematics (summa cum laude), Master of Science, (1975) and, Ph.D. (1979) degree in biostatistics from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has worked for more than 25 years in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries as head of clinical and regulatory functions for these organizations.
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David J Rechtman, M.D.
Chief Medical Officer
Dr. Rechtman received his M.D. from State University of New York - Downstate Medical Center College of Medicine. Following a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in infectious diseases he served on the faculty of SUNY-Health Science Center at Brooklyn while helping to establish and lead the multi-disciplinary AIDS care team at the affiliated Kings County Hospital.
Upon deciding to pursue a career in industry, Dr. Rechtman was employed at Baxter Healthcare Corporation’s Hyland Division where he was responsible for product safety for the entire product line and medical affairs for immunological and infectious disease products. While at Hyland, he was instrumental in popularizing a highly effective therapy for a serious complication of bone marrow transplantation, as well as helping to achieve new indications for existing products. Subsequently, Dr. Rechtman spent several years as Medical Director for Ribi Immunochem Research Inc. where he was the Medical Officer for the first phase III trial of a commercial therapeutic cancer vaccine, which was targeted against malignant melanoma. That product was subsequently successfully licensed in Canada. He also directed the team developing a product for the prevention of sepsis in high- risk patients.
For the better part of a decade, Dr. Rechtman provided consulting services to various pharmaceutical and biotech companies. These activities subsequently developed into a successful contract research organization that designed and ran clinical trials in the U.S. and abroad. Dr. Rechtman has been an invited speaker at professional gatherings in the U.S. and Europe, has published original research and written chapters for several textbooks, and has given guest lectures to undergraduate and graduate university students in the areas of infectious and immunological diseases and therapies and their development.
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