Posts by Saama Executives

Ken Coleman is a long-term veteran of Silicon Valley. Ken is a Board Member of Saama Technologies, Inc., an advanced data and analytics company delivering actionable business insights to the Fortune 2000 in life sciences and other verticals. He started his career at Hewlett-Packard Company in various senior management roles. He then moved on to VP of Product Development at Activision; EVP of Global Sales, Services and Marketing for Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI). He was also founder, chairman, and CEO of ITM Software, acquired by BMC Software. Ken has developed a well-respected and deserved reputation for mentoring people in various stages of their careers and has been a passionate champion for diversity.

In addition to his role at Saama, Ken serves on the board of directors of CSAA Insurance Group, Entertainment Partners, Prevedere, EIS Group and Complia Health. He is currently a Special Advisor to both Andreessen Horowitz Venture Capital Firm and Carrick Capital Partners Private Equity Firm. He is also an advisor at Pinterest as well as several other early-stage technology companies. He is a member of the Executive Leadership Council and the Dean’s Advisory Council for the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University. He has helped jumpstart many careers and is also the recipient of countless leadership and diversity awards and honors.

Ken earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from The Ohio State University. He also served as a captain in the United States Air Force.

Dr. Nabulsi, a physician and public health professional, is a seasoned global corporate executive with a successful track record in pharmaceutical research and development. He is currently Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at Frazier Healthcare Partners in Palo Alto, CA. This followed a 14-year career at Takeda Pharmaceuticals marked by industry leading innovations and transformational accomplishments.

At Takeda, he served as both the deputy chief medical and scientific officer of Company Limited, one of the 20 largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, and R&D head of strategic and professional affairs.  In these roles, he led all R&D medical and operations functions, oversaw a $3 billion global portfolio, and managed a staff of over 1000 and budget of $450 million.

During his 14-year career at Takeda, in the U.S. and Japan, Dr. Nabulsi has overseen global drug development for both early and late stage agents, bringing the majority of Takeda’s 21 new drugs in multiple therapeutic areas and countries to market from 2005 to 2015. He is also responsible for the design and execution of the company’s major R&D transformation utilizing industry leading approach to drive innovation; in addition, he led the creation of the first global Biotechnology Innovation Park in Japan. Dr. Nabulsi has led or directed partnerships and alliances in oncology, immunology, and cardiovascular medicine and metabolism. His impact extends to investor relations, regulatory affairs, crisis management and stakeholder relations, including patient advocacy.

From 2009 to 2013, Dr. Nabulsi played a key role in transforming Takeda’s organization and culture following acquisitions of Millenium, Nycomed, and TAP. From 2006 to 2009, Dr. Nabulsi worked in Japan as the company’s general manager of strategic development, where he oversaw global development and regulatory strategy for all Takeda products as well as portfolio strategy and R&D alliance management. He was also instrumental in the globalization efforts of Takeda R&D. From 2004 to 2006, Dr. Nabulsi held leadership positions in R&D Operations.

Dr. Nabulsi is a member of the boards of directors of the Foundation for Sarcoidosis Research. He previously served on the board of directors for the Illinois Science and Technology Coalition, iBio Institute, and Rosalind Franklin School of Medicine and Science College of Pharmacy and has held academic appointments in epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Nabulsi has an M.D. from Ain-Shams University, Cairo, Egypt, and a M.P.H. from the University of Minnesota. His professional affiliations include the Chief Medical Officers Executive Summit & Roundtable; International Society of Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR); American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO); and the American Heart Association (AHA). He is the author of or cited in over 25 scientific publications.

The Honorable Dr. David J. Shulkin was the ninth Secretary of the US Department of Veterans Affairs. Nominated by President Trump to serve in his Cabinet, Secretary Shulkin was confirmed by the US Senate by a vote of 100-0. Secretary Shulkin previously served as Under Secretary for Health having been appointed by President Obama and confirmed unanimously by the US Senate.

As Secretary, Dr. Shulkin represented the 21 million American veterans and was responsible for the nation’s largest integrated health care system with over 1,200 sites of care, serving over 9 million Veterans. VA is also the nation’s largest provider of graduate medical education and major contributor of medical research and provides veterans with disability payments, education through the GI bill, home loans, and runs a national cemetery system.

Prior to coming to VA, Secretary Shulkin was a widely respected healthcare executive having served as chief executive of leading hospitals and health systems including Beth Israel in New York City and Morristown Medical Center in Northern NJ. Secretary Shulkin has also held numerous physician leadership roles including the Chief Medical Officer of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University Hospital, and the Medical College of Pennsylvania Hospital. Secretary Shulkin has held academic positions including the Chairman of Medicine and Vice Dean at Drexel University School of Medicine. As an entrepreneur, Secretary Shulkin founded and served as the Chairman and CEO of DoctorQuality one of the first consumer orientated sources of information for quality and safety in healthcare. He has served on boards of managed care companies, technology companies, and health care organizations.

Secretary Shulkin is the 2018 University of Pennsylvania Leonard Davis Institute Distinguished Health Policy Fellow and Professor in the Jefferson University College of Population Health. He is board-certified internist. He received his medical degree from the Medical College of Pennsylvania, his internship at Yale University School of Medicine, and a residency and Fellowship in General Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Presbyterian Medical Center. He received advanced training in outcomes research and economics as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania.

Over his career Secretary Shulkin has been named as one of the Top 100 Physician Leaders of Hospitals and Health Systems by Becker’s Hospital Review and one of the “50 Most Influential Physician Executives in the Country” by Modern Healthcare and Modern Physician. He has also previously been named, “One Hundred Most Influential People in American Healthcare” by Modern Healthcare.

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Murali is responsible for bringing value across drug lifecycle for biopharmaceuticals through patient-centric data analytics solutions, joint innovation, and transformative business models with the broader ecosystem.

With over two decades of experience in Industrials, Telecommunications, Technology, and Life Sciences verticals, Murali brings extensive knowledge in mission-critical systems, data analytics, AI/ML, open source, and cloud technologies. During his tenure at Saama, he has pioneered “Analytics-as-a-Service” for mid to large size organizations with the goal of democratizing data, verticalizing technology stack, leveraging complementary ecosystem, and prescriptive guided outcomes generation.
Murali has played various leadership roles at Saama since the early days of the company with a focus towards customer’s success in their data analytics strategy and drive growth for Saama through aggressive Go to Market strategies.

As SVP of Ecosystem Innovations, Murali and his team drive Saama’s strategy for collaboration with broader life sciences ecosystem including CRO’s, health systems, academia, data providers, consortiums, public agencies, and non-profit organizations. With his passion in emerging markets, disruptive technologies, and transformative business models, he engages with the broader ecosystem to jointly innovate through insights driven products and enhance value for all ecosystem players, accelerate drug development for biopharmaceuticals, and, most importantly, enhance patient outcomes.

He earned B.E. in Electronics and Communications from Bangalore University. Murali’s work in “Analytics-as-a-Service” is featured as a case study in the book, The Strategic CIO.

Dr. Jonathan Zung is an experienced pharmaceutical industry executive with more than 25 years of development experience. He has held executive leadership positions in the pharmaceutical and pharmaceutical services industries. Jonathan currently serves as advisor to the CEO WCG and President of Clintrax. Prior to that he was group president, Clinical Development & Commercialization Services for Covance Drug Development where he led a global organization of over 8,000 employees in 60 countries spanning all phases of development (Phase I- IV), along with global market access services.

Prior to Covance Jonathan was vice president and head of Global Clinical Sciences and Operations at UCB, with responsibility for clinical operations, data management, statistical sciences, contracting, medical writing and operational excellence across the United States, Europe and Asia. Before joining UCB, he was vice president and head of Global Development Operations at Bristol-Myers Squibb, where he led a 1,400-person organization that managed clinical trials from Phase II through registration. He also held several positions of increasing responsibility at Pfizer Global Research and Development.

Jonathan is a member of the board of directors of the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC). Previously, he served as chair of the TransCelerate BioPharma operations committee from 2013-2015 and served as a member of The Florida Institute of Technology Board of Trustees from 2010- 2016. He received his doctorate in analytical chemistry from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and has a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida.

Dr. Mak Jawadekar is currently an independent Pharma Professional. He worked at Pfizer, Inc. based in Groton-New London Connecticut for 28 consecutive years as a Director, Portfolio Management. During his career at Pfizer, he was responsible for Drug Delivery Technology Assessment function involving external ‘Drug Delivery’ technologies. He has extensive experience in creating and cultivating external partnerships and alliances for drug delivery technologies. He began his professional career at Pfizer Central Research in early 1982, after having completed his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics at the University of Minnesota. Mak was honored with an honorary D.Sc. degree by DYP Mumbai University, recommended by the President of India in Feb 2011.

His experience with Pfizer R&D includes Solids R&D, Drug Product formulation/ Dosage Form/ Drug Delivery development, Clinical Trials Supply Manufacturing, Scale-up and Technology Transfer, Pharma R&D outsourcing as well as Pharmacy areas. He managed several functions/groups within R&D for many years. He was the Bench Scientist who worked on challenging Sertraline (ZOLOFT) tablets formulation which became multibillion dollar products for many years for Pfizer Inc. In the recent past, he had been also been engaged in coordinating outsourcing R&D activities with external partners. He was recipient of the “M.L. Khorana Memorial Lecture of the Year Award” at IPC held in New Delhi, India, in December 2001. He has presented at many professional meetings and has participated in various Panel Discussions/Round Tables.

Dr. Scot Harper received his undergraduate degree from DePauw University and his doctoral degrees from Indiana University School of Medicine. He subsequently served on the faculty of the University of South Alabama College of Medicine, where he oversaw an extramurally-funded research program in hypertension, stroke, and neoplasia.

He began his industry career with GlaxoSmithKline in medical affairs and new product development roles. He was recruited to Eli Lilly and Company to develop its oncology investigator-initiated clinical trial program and later became US oncology medical director, followed by a role leading US clinical research operations. He was recruited to Novartis Pharmaceuticals to head up North America clinical research operations and later became the CEO of a Novartis subsidiary (Novartis Clinical Operations, Inc.), which provided clinical research services to all clinical development divisions within the company.

Following his retirement from Novartis, Dr. Harper became the head of clinical development at Endocyte, an oncology biotechnology company, leading its early phase clinical program. He is currently president of SLH Group, LLC, a life sciences consulting company. “Saama has developed a suite of products which will transform the way clinical research projects are executed, dramatically improving productivity and performance, and I am delighted to serve on its Clinical Advisory Board.”

Dr. Rebecca Daniels Kush is President of Catalysis, Inc. a consulting company founded in 1997 with a vision to apply enterprising solutions to transform clinical research and accelerate a learning health system. She is the Chief Innovation Officer for Elligo Health Research, which is dedicated to engaging physicians and patients who may not otherwise have access to research and transforming the research process using eSource and improved data flow techniques. She also consults for the Translational Research Informatics Institute (TRI Japan) working to expand the International Academic Research Organization (iARO) Council activities globally. She serves on the Steering Committee of the Learning Health Community.

Dr. Kush was previously the Founder, President and CEO of the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC). After 20 years, this standards development organization (SDO) now offers a suite of data standards that support clinical research in therapeutic areas that affect over 1.5 billion lives. These standards are now required for submissions for new drug applications by FDA and PMDA.

Dr. Kush has over 30 years of experience in clinical research, including positions with academia, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, a global CRO and biopharmaceutical companies in the U.S. and Japan. She wrote the chapter on Data Sharing in Clinical Research Informatics (ed. Springer), was the lead author of eClinical Trials: Planning and Implementation (a CenterWatch publication) and has written numerous publications for journals including New England Journal of Medicine and Science Translational Medicine. She is currently an Associate Editor for Wiley’s open access journal on Learning Health Systems.

Dr. Kush earned her Doctorate in Physiology and Pharmacology from the University of California San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine and Bachelor of Science degree in Biology and Chemistry from the University of New Mexico.

Dr. Stephen Cunningham is a 25 year pharmaceutical veteran who has led teams that delivered on the development, regulatory approvals and launch of numerous significant products to improve patient health. He has global experience leading cross-functional teams from Phase 1 through life cycle management in the areas of Neuroscience, Cardiovascular, Metabolism, Respiratory, Immunology, Oncology, Women’s Health, Transplant and Clinical Pharmacology.

During his career, Stephen lead and developed diverse cross-functional teams in Europe, Japan, Asia, Canada and the United States and has broad and deep experience in setting strategic direction, delivering projects, restructuring organizations and implementing transformational organization change. Stephen started his career at ICI Pharmaceuticals, holding global positions of increasing responsibility at ICI, Zeneca then Novartis. After joining Novartis in 2000 as Head of Medical Affairs in the US, Stephen quickly assumed the role of Chief Scientific Officer and Head of US Clinical Development, Medical Affairs and Evidence Based Medicine in 2001.

While at Novartis he built a world class Novartis US Clinical Development and Medical Affairs organization supporting drug development, launch and life cycle management of products worldwide. Since 2014, Stephen has worked with venture capital, as a strategic consultant and as an independent board director.

Dr. Mehdi is an Assistant Professor in Clinical Epidemiology at Parisian Hospital Hôtel-Dieu. He is mainly invested in interfaces between clinical research and open technologies with a strong focus on Blockchain.

He coordinates a number of Open Science programs, such as echOpen and Epidemium and was also an Associate professor in pure mathematics and a software developer.

Dr. Ajit Shetty currently serves as the chairman of Flemish Institute of Biotechnology, Zwijnaarde, Belgium, which is among one of the world’s top 10 research institutes. He is a member of the board of directors of Agile Therapeutics, NJ, Actinium Pharmaceuticals, NY, and Institute of Tropical Medicine, Belgium and the board of trustees at Carnegie Mellon University, PA.

Dr. Shetty helped launch the pharmaceutical arm of Janssen USA and turned it into a viable strand alone company. He was the Chairman of Janssen Pharmaceutica and a member of the Operating Committee, Johnson & Johnson for 9 years, where he developed and institutionalized a major transformation of the enterprise supply chain to take it to a new level of quality, flexibility and optimization. This initiative resulted in a benefit of $6 – $7 billion in terms of cost of goods, transportation, distribution, and working capital, among other business benefits.

In his tenure with Janssen Pharmaceutica, Dr. Shetty worked as its managing director and Executive Vice President, Finance, a role in which he spearheaded the expansion and growth of the Janssen Group of Companies via innovative product launches and effective commercialization strategies.

Dr. Shetty has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award, India in 2008. The honor of Right Honorable Sir and the title of Baron was conferred upon him in 2005. He was also elected “Manager of the Year 2004” by Trends/Flemish Management Association.

Dr. Shetty holds an MBA degree from Carnegie Mellon University and a Ph.D. (Metallurgy) and BA (Natural Sciences), Trinity College, Cambridge University, U.K.

Dr. Massey is Chief Life Sciences Officer at Saama Technologies. As Chief Life Sciences Officer, Dr. Massey will be responsible for driving market leadership for Saama’s award-winning life sciences data analytics solutions. Dr. Massey will oversee pre-Phase 1 through Phase 3-plus clinical development, identifying and activating opportunities for emerging and existing clients to leverage Saama’s Clinical Analytics Platform to successfully launch critical new therapies into the marketplace.

Prior to joining Saama, Dr. Massey was Vice President, US Medical Affairs at Merk & Co. where he was responsible for the overall strategic planning, governance and management of the US Medical Affairs organization. This multi-disciplinary organization consisted of field medical professionals, professional society/patient advocacy group interface, and continuing medical education provides Merck’s scientific interface with all key scientific leaders and managed market decision makers.

Prior to joining Merck, Dr. Massey was Head, Medical Affairs at Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma America. Dr. Massey began his pharmaceutical industry career at Marion Laboratories where he provided scientific recommendations of new product acquisition opportunities before assuming key Medical Affairs and Drug Development leadership positions at Novartis, Parke-Davis and Bristol-Meyers Squibb.

Dr. Massey received his Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Pharmacy degrees from the University of Florida in Gainesville. He completed a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in pediatric clinical pharmacology under the direction of Allan Neims, MD, and Leslie Hendeles, PharmaD prior to joining the faculty at the University of Tennessee.

Joe is the Vice President of Sales at Saama Technologies, responsible for Saama’s commercial development in the Life Sciences industry. He drives overall sales and customer success, building the infrastructure, growing the team and enchaining Saama’s position in the industry. Joe brings a wealth of sales acumen and customer focus to Saama from his 25+ years in sales and sales leadership, mostly in Life Sciences.

Prior to joining Saama, Joe spent over 6 years working with Medidata Solutions, a leader in eClnical development software, managing teams for both direct sales into Pharmaceutical, Biotech and Medical Device companies, as well as the large Contract Research Organization (CRO) space. While there he consistently achieved stellar sales results, helping to grow the business and increase customer satisfaction and retention rates. Prior to Medidata, Joe was Vice President of Sales at Sparta Systems, a leader in Quality Management Systems in Life Sciences, where he transformed the sales team and built winning teams that accounted for significant company growth.

Joe graduated from Villanova University undergraduate business school and later earned an MBA with honors from Saint Joseph’s University. Joe thoroughly enjoys his three college-aged children. He’s personally involved in volunteer and community service with various organizations, including serving on the Board of Trustees for The Boys & Girls Club of Camden NJ. He’s an avid skier, fitness enthusiast, and Harley Davidson motorcycle rider. Joe spends most summer weekends at the NJ beach enjoying outdoor activities.

James M. Karis has had a 35 year career in the pharmaceutical, healthcare services, health technology and medical device industries. In addition to his experience as an entrepreneur and a board member, he has held a variety of senior executive positions in public and private companies.

Most recently, James was the Chief Executive Officer of MAPI Group, a global healthcare services company which was acquired by Icon PLC in 2017. Prior to joining MAPI, he was the Co-Chief Executive and Chief Executive Officer of CollabRx, a NASDAQ listed health information technology company from 2010 to 2012. From 2000 to 2009, he served as the President, Chief Executive Officer and Director of Entelos, Inc, a developer of computer models for clinical trials. Earlier he was the Chief Operating Officer and President of Parexel International Inc. He was also the Vice President of International Operations for Baxter International and the founder of KMR Group, Inc., a pharmaceutical R&D analytics firm.

Mr. Karis currently serves on the Board of Shield Therapeutics, a UK public specialty pharma company. Previously, he served on the Boards of Mapi, DataTrak, Inc , Marina Biotech and CollabRx, Inc. James earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Management and Economics from Purdue University and a Master of Arts degree with a major in Applied Economics from American University.

Jay Kaminski is currently Chief Operating Officer at Celularity, a start-up Biotech company focusing harnessing the power of allogeneic placental cell therapeutics in Immuno-Oncology and other diseases with unmet medical needs.

Jay has close to 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry covering a broad range of therapeutic areas. He is an accomplished biopharmaceutical executive who is equally adept at shaping strategy and driving execution as well as nurturing culture. Jay held the position of SVP, Global Clinical Research & Development Operations at Celgene Corporation and was responsible for leading all Global Clinical R&D Operations functions in support of Celgene sponsored trials (200) phase I through IV across all therapeutic areas with combined internal and external budget greater than $2B annually.

Jay has held various positions with increasing responsibility with Celgene over 20 years including; Director Field Sales, Executive Director Sales and Commercial Operations, Vice President Strategic Operations, Vice President General Manager, Celgene Cellular Therapeutics and Vice President Business Development. Jay was instrumental in designing and patenting the enhanced S.T.E.P.S. (REMS) managed distribution program in support of THALOMID (thalidomide) and REVLIMID (lenalidomide) commercialization and successor compounds which Celgene and the industry at large distribute through REMS programs.

Prior to joining Celgene Corporation Jay was with TAP Pharmaceuticals for 7 years, a joint venture between Abbott Laboratories and Takeda Pharmaceuticals where he held various positions in sales, sales management and marketing with his last position of Group Marketing Manager.

Jay holds a B.S Degree in Business Management from Ithaca College.

John J. Fox is Vice President, Global Payroll, with Johnson & Johnson. He is currently responsible for all Payroll operations and projects globally.

Prior to his current assignment, John served as Vice President of Information Technology for the Pharmaceuticals Group from 2000 to 2009 and served as a member of the Pharmaceuticals Group Operating Committee. Before this he was the Vice President Information Management for the Pharmaceuticals Group, EMEA and Asia/Pacific, based in Beerse, Belgium.

John began his career as a Medical Statistician at Janssen UK, moving into Information Management in 1982 and eventually assuming the position of IM Manager for Janssen UK in 1985. In the following seven years, John assumed responsibility for Finance in Janssen UK, eventually becoming the Director of Finance and IM and a member of the Management Board of the Company.

Over the years, John has built a strong reputation as an active business partner and has been responsible for a number of major systems implementations supporting the supply chain, research and development, sales and marketing, and administration areas of the business.

After receiving a degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, John began as an actuarial trainee and later joined Janssen UK in 1979.

John is a native of Glasgow, Scotland. He and his wife, Margaret, are the parents of two sons.

Karim plays a pivotal role in helping Saama realize its audacious goal of enabling pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to accelerate the development of life-saving and life-altering therapies. He is responsible for driving product strategy for Saama’s AI-enabled data analytics solutions and identifying opportunities that lead to successful market share growth. Karim works closely with Saama leadership and the solution development and sales teams to expand Saama’s industry footprint. His intuitive understanding of data analytics’ potential to transform clinical development has informed and directed Saama’s strategic focus on the life sciences industry.

Karim has been integral to the successful launch and adoption of Saama’s innovative solutions, including the award-winning Life Science Analytics Cloud (LSAC) and Deep Learning Intelligent Assistant (DaLIA). During Karim’s tenure, LSAC was named one of the PM360’s Most Innovative Products of 2017, and was the impetus for Frost & Sullivan’s recognition of Saama with its 2018 Global Enabling Technology Leadership Award.

Karim also oversees the critical marketing initiatives and milestones that ensure potential client-partners embrace and leverage Saama’s offerings to inform and optimize their drug development efforts.

Karim joined Saama from Plantronics, where he led software strategy and product management. He also served in leadership positions spanning business development, product management, sales and network engineering at Cisco, Vocera Communications, MobileIron and DiVitas.

Karim’s experience and expertise have made him a go-to expert for commentary about emerging industry trends. He is a sought-after speaker and published author of industry commentary. Karim studied computational and applied mathematics at San Jose State University.

Amit executes Saama’s clinical analytics innovation roadmap by identifying and integrating emerging concepts across the clinical research value chain, fostering and strengthening clinical ecosystem relationships, and communicating Saama’s strategy to key stakeholders.

Charged with helping Saama positively impact the clinical research value chain by improving the pharmaceutical industry’s existing clinical analytics ecosystem, Amit collaborates closely with Saama’s Board of Advisors, product management and marketing teams, customers and partners, including CROs, healthcare-technology startups and data providers. Amit is leading the development of a clinical innovation ROI model to differentiate Saama’s competitive value to customers.

Amit leads Saama’s engagement with emerging clinical process and analytic technology companies, as well as the venture capital community, sharing Saama’s macro views on clinical analytics and learning about new and relevant companies that are disrupting industry norms. Amit translates this insight into recommendations for Saama’s leadership to inform investment and partnership decisions. Amit works closely with internal business and technology groups to understand and help shape their strategies and goals related to application development, artificial intelligence and machine learning, clinical technology, enhanced user experiences, collaboration, mobile, wearables and big data.

Amit organizes and leads executive briefings and follow-up with customers, vendors, and partners to identify areas and opportunities to innovate, optimize the end-user experience, and increase Saama’s business-enabling capabilities through partnerships with innovative data providers and CRO’s.

Sagar Anisingaraju leads Saama’s transformation journey, creating focus areas, business models, and repeatable offerings. He guides the concepts, design, and development of Saama’s innovative data and analytics solutions to generate successful business outcomes for customers.

Sagar’s passion is to help pharma and biotech create intelligent solutions to operationalize insights from data and solve business challenges in drug development and delivery. Sagar and his team leverage Deep Learning, which has produced an exciting new era of clinical data understanding across the pharma ecosystem, for cost and time savings.

Sagar was named 2013 Chief Strategy Officer of The Year by Innovation Enterprise and was awarded a patent in 2018 for his work using Natural Language Understanding (NLU) for risk and compliance programs. He came to Saama through the 2010 acquisition of InfoSTEP, Inc., the analytics company he founded in 1998. Sagar served as InfoSTEP CEO for 11 years, where he architected and sold solutions for CIOs to manage IT business value and for Risk Officers to manage business risks. He led the 2007 effort to list part of the company on the Bombay Stock Exchange. Prior to that, he worked at CMC Ltd. with other pioneers in mathematical font generation and transliteration systems.

Sagar holds a B.S. from Andhra University and an M.S. from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur. He is a featured industry speaker and frequent industry association contributor, and has served on the boards of ISACA, Silicon Valley Chapter, as Vice President and Director.

Vasant Shetty leads the business transformation efforts and is responsible for aligning cross functional initiatives to achieve focused business results.

Vasant enjoys not only being a part of such a fast growing company, but also working with Saama employees known for their high energy, passion and dedication. Vasant has over 20 years of experience in operations, marketing, and supporting technology solutions in the Business Intelligence and data analytics space in India and North America. Vasant finds the new days of data analytics to be exciting, and believes that Saama’s 18 years of expertise will help the company to reach new heights.

Prior to Saama, Vasant held a leadership position at DataStraits, a data analytics services company, where he was responsible for establishing a global product development and data analytics team in India and increasing the DataStraits footprint globally. Prior to DataStraits, he was responsible for building the center of excellence for business Intelligence at Capgemini, a leading services firm.

Vasant attended Executive M.B.A. program from SP Jain Institute of Management and Research in Mumbai, India and holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Maharashtra University in Kolhapur, India.

Ms. Poon is an Executive-in-Residence in the Department of Management and Human Resources at The Max M. Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University, where she served as Dean and the John W. Berry, Sr. Chair in Business from 2009 to 2014. Prior to joining Fisher, Ms. Poon spent eight years at Johnson & Johnson, most recently as vice chairman and worldwide chairman of pharmaceuticals. At Johnson & Johnson, she served on the company’s board of directors and executive committee and was responsible for managing the pharmaceutical businesses of the company. Prior to joining Johnson & Johnson, Ms. Poon spent 15 years at Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, a global pharmaceutical company, where she held senior leadership positions including president of international medicines and president of medical devices. Ms. Poon serves on the boards of directors of Prudential Financial, Inc. and The Sherwin-Williams Company and the Supervisory Board of Royal Philips Electronics.

John Hinshaw is a board director, angel investor, vintner, and former senior executive of HP, Boeing, and Verizon. He was most recently the Chief Customer Officer for Hewlett Packard Enterprise until November 2016. In this role, he led the strategic accounts and strategic alliances organizations as well as the information technology and cyber security functions for the company.

John joined Hewlett-Packard in 2011 as the Executive Vice President of Technology & Operations, which had the information technology, sales operations, shared services, procurement, real estate, and security organizations reporting into him. He led that organization until the formation of Hewlett Packard Enterprise in November 2015.
Previously, John spent nearly five years at The Boeing Company, serving as the General Manager of the Information Solutions business unit, and earlier as their CIO. He also led Boeing’s company-wide corporate initiative on Information Security and Information Management. While at Boeing in 2009, John was named CIO of the Year by the Executives’ Club of Chicago and the Association of Information Technology Professionals.

Prior to Boeing, John spent 14 years at Verizon where he served as Senior Vice President and CIO of Verizon Wireless. He also held a number of key positions focused on enabling business growth, reducing costs and improving business productivity. Earlier in his career, John served as a consultant with Accenture.
John is a member of the board of directors of The Bank of New York Mellon, where he serves on the Technology and Risk Committees. He is also a member of the board of directors of DocuSign where he serves on the Audit and Nominating and Governance Committees. John also serves on the board of directors of the National Academy Foundation (NAF), which helps 100,000 high school students be college and career ready. He chairs the STEM committee of the NAF board.

John has done a half dozen angel investments in technology and wine industry companies. He and his wife Julia have been making Hinshaw Family Wine since 2012 producing Chardonnay, Merlot, and Syrah.

John and Julia have established a foundation with a focus on education, health, wellness and other charitable needs. John holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in computer information systems from James Madison University.

As Saama Technologies‘ Chief Client Care Officer, Rajeev Dadia leads the Client Care organization and the Delivery organization, which includes Data Science, Business Strategy, Talent Management, Solutions Delivery and overall Global Delivery teams. As Chief Technology Officer, Rajeev Dadia drives the technology roadmap to enhance Saama’s technical edge and improve overall quality through leadership in delivery process and resource management. Previously at Saama, he led the development of strategies, methodologies, and partnerships that enhance Saama’s solution sets offered during each client engagement. Rajeev focuses on cloud, syndicated data sources, social data, advanced analytics and mobile technologies as it impacts the data and analytics needs of the organization. He has 24 years of successive experience in leadership roles at Saama and at Silicon Graphics (SGI) in Corporate Information Systems.

Rajeev has created BI and Analytic strategies for large organizations and managed large-scale deployments of data warehousing, analytics and applied data mining/predictive analytics systems in diverse business environments. He has also been involved in analysis, design and deployment of both B2C and B2B solutions in different vertical industries. In addition, he led the development of a Business Intelligence Center of Excellence operation to provide offshore development capabilities.

He earned an M.S. in Computer Science at California State University, Chico.

Marianne Jackson has devoted her career to providing effective human capital strategies; aiding numerous companies in achieving their business objectives. She has 20 years of experience as the Chief Human Resource Officer in some of California’s best-known corporations. Her experience spans both healthcare and technology industries including Cisco Systems, Palm, Sandisk, Sun Microsystems and Blue Shield of California. She is well known for her practical approach to organizational effectiveness, executive/leadership development, workforce optimization, strategic planning and culture-shaping.

She is the president of a human capital company that assists organizations with improving competitiveness. Her approach effectively links the business strategy with a targeted people strategy to ensure the right capabilities and culture have been invested in such that it propels performance, increases engagement and strengthens the employer’s brand.

Marianne currently serves on the Board of Trustees for the Health Trust of Silicon Valley and the advisory board for Saama Technologies. She previously held board positions with the Blue Shield Foundation, Catholic Charities and business advisory boards for Santa Clara University and San Jose State University.

Marianne earned her B.A. in Psychology and Sociology from the University of California at Santa Barbara. She did her graduate work at the University of Santa Clara in Counseling Psychology.

Bharath Kadaba is VP of Product Development at Intuit. Before that he was VP of Media Engineering at Yahoo, which he joined in June 2004. Earlier, from 2001 to 2004, he was was Vice President and General Manager at Siebel Systems, where he spearheaded a cross-functional initiative to create and bring to market the Universal Application Network Product.

Prior to joining Siebel, Bharath was Chief Technology Officer and Vice President, Managed Application Services, at AritaSoft. He spent two years at this enterprise Application Service Provider startup and was responsible for building and managing the engineering, operations and customer support functions. He previously worked at News Corp., eventually serving as President of the News Internet Services business unit. His longest tenure was a 14-year stint at IBM Corp., primarily at the T.J. Watson Research Center.

Bharath has a Ph. D. in Computer Networks from the University of Hawaii. He also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a M.S. degree in Computers and Control from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India.

Mark Roberts manages engineering—including R&D, professional services and partner engineering—at TiVo Inc. He was previously Vice President of Operations and CIO, overseeing the development and maintenance of TiVo’s technology infrastructure, as well as service operations and customer service.

Earlier, Mark served as Vice President of Information Technology at Acuson Corp., a leading manufacturer of medical diagnostic ultrasound products, where he was responsible for the company’s worldwide information technology systems. Before that, he was Director of Information Systems at SGI. He also spent seven years with the San Francisco office of Andersen Consulting, serving high-technology clients including Apple, Sun Microsystems and Tandem.

Mark holds a B.S. in Economics with a minor in Business from the University of Santa Clara.

Jim Cates has over 30+ years’ experience in the IT field. He spent 20 years at IBM in various R&D management positions, developing a broad range of successful IT products. He has spent 10+ years in Silicon Valley as the CIO, VP/IT and Corporate Process Officer at four high-tech companies, each building over $1 Billion in revenue. He was also the COO of IT Solutions (a startup that evolved to Keane consulting). Currently, Jim works with startups, non-profits and the CA Community College system to increase diversity in the STEM disciplines for industry. He is co-leading the creation of a two year cyber security degree program at Merritt college in Oakland.

Jim holds an M.S. in Computer and Information Science from The Ohio State University (OSU) Engineering College. He is a recipient of Ohio State’s Distinguished Alumnus Award from the college of Engineering and is the co-author of two books: CIO Wisdom and Climbing The Ladder of Business Intelligence. He currently serves on the advisory boards of the Computer Science and Engineering department in the college of Engineering at OSU and the Arts and Sciences College at Ohio Northern University.

Andre M Boisvert is a 30-year veteran of the software industry and a pioneer in the BI market. He began his career with IBM, where he spent 13 years in senior management positions across sales, marketing and R&D. He next went to Cognos and then Oracle, where he was senior VP of Worldwide Marketing and a member of the management committee. In 2000, Andre became president and COO of SAS Institute, the world’s largest privately held software company. In 2001, he became chairman and CEO at Sagent Technologies (NASDAQ: SGNT) and in 2004 successfully completed the sale of the company to Group 1 Software (NASDAQ:GSOF). In 2002, Boisvert became a director of VA Software (NASDAQ: LNUX), the creator and owner of SourceForge, the world’s largest repository of open source projects. This experience led to his co-founding Pentaho Corporation, an open source BI platform that was acquired by Hitachi Data Systems for +$500M in February of 2015.

Andre is currently a Director of Zend Technologies, Inc. (the PHP company), Chairman of Palamida Corporation (software composition analysis for IP and security risk management), Vice-Chairman of River Logic Inc. (prescriptive analytics), Director of Clario Analytics Inc. (cloud-based analytics for multi-channel marketing), Director of Transera Communications Inc. (cloud-based customer interaction optimization), Director of UK-based SmartFocus Corporation (email and social marketing), and Chairman of Issuer Direct (NYSE: ISDR), a provider of regulatory compliance solutions and services.

Kevin Rooney is a 20+ year veteran leader in the insurance and technology space. Kevin’s leadership enabled American Access, a pure play non-standard auto insurance company, to grow 6x over ten years. In his roles as CIO and Chief Strategy Officer, he transformed the company into a data-driven, people-led organization. His unique blend of values-based leadership, people skills, technical acumen, and strategic insight allows Kevin to see both the forest and the trees.

Kevin has served on several other boards, including his current role as President-Elect of SIM Chicago, a 300+ person network of CIO’s and other technology leaders in the Chicago market.

Kevin holds a BA in Business Administration from the University of Notre Dame, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude.

Dr. Mohit Kaushal has had an extensive career within clinical medicine, health policy, academic research and investing. He’s led a number of investments including Humedica (acquired by Optum Health), Rxante (acquired by Millennium), Change Healthcare (acquired by Emdeon), goBalto, and Gravie.

During his time in the Obama administration, Mohit was a member of the White House Health IT task force, a cross-agency team focusing on implementing the technology aspects of health reform, and testified to Congress on the application of beneficial technology to the Medicare population.

As part of the first dedicated health care team at the Federal Communications Commission, which he led and built, Mohit initiated collaboration with the Food and Drug Administration for the regulatory streamlining of converged telecommunication and medical devices, leading to the release of the mobile medical applications guidance document. In addition, they reformed the Rural Healthcare Fund to create the Healthcare Connect Fund and produced the Health Care chapter of the National Broadband Plan. Prior to this, Mohit was an investment professional at Polaris Venture Partners, and held roles with Merrill Lynch’s Health Care Investment Banking Group and the World Health Organization.

Mohit is a Consulting Associate Professor at Stanford University’s Clinical Excellence Research Center and a Visiting Scholar at the Brookings Institution. He serves on the board of directors for George Health Enterprises and on the curation team at TEDMED. He has been appointed to the FDASIA Workgroup of the Health IT Policy Committee and to the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics, advising HHS on Data Access and Use. Mohit holds an MBA from Stanford and an MD with distinction from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London.

Rich Roth leads Dignity Health’s innovation efforts, which seek to create and test novel services, programs, partnerships, and/or technologies – from within and outside of healthcare – that challenge the status quo and have the potential to reduce the cost of care, improve quality, and/or increase access to services.

Working in concert with Dignity Health employees and physicians, Rich works to anticipate emerging trends and technologies with the goal of incubating, studying, and scaling efforts to improve care. Most recently, he led Dignity Health’s efforts in forming SharedClarity, a novel new start-up focused on creating transparency into medical device performance in an effort to improve patient outcomes and lower the cost of care.

Rich regularly advises venture capital organizations and co-manages Dignity Health’s Strategic Investment Fund. In 2012, he was recognized by CHAUSA as one of the most promising leaders under 40 in healthcare. He holds a Masters degree in Healthcare Administration from the University of Minnesota and a Bachelors degree in Public Health from West Chester University.

Patrick Steele is an innovative executive with 47 years of experience in healthcare, insurance, corporate retail, wholesale, supply chain, merchandising, and information technology (IT) functions. He recently retired as Executive Vice President and CIO for Delta Dental of California and a member of the Senior Executive Management Team. Delta Dental is an $8 billion enterprise and one of the largest dental benefit administrators in the nation. Prior to joining Delta Dental, he was involved in consulting and business development, and was active in establishing several technology companies that serve the retail sector.

As a former member of the executive management team for a $37 billion retailer, Patrick led numerous strategic projects, inclusive of both large and small mergers and acquisitions. He is focused on the power of organizations using technology as a differentiator in their marketplace and is always looking for solutions that fall outside of the usual lines of business he is involved in. To assist in this quest, Patrick sits on the Advisory Board for a Venture Capital firm and is active in the evaluation of new companies for the firm to invest in. He is also a Board member of Dignity Health, a large multi-state Healthcare delivery company based in San Francisco.

Patrick holds a BA in Business Administration and a BS in Mathematics, both from the University in Washington.

Debra Engel is a director and advisor to a number of organizations in Silicon Valley. She currently serves on the boards of Institute for the Future, National Academy of Human Resources Foundation and Facing History and Ourselves. She is an advisory board member for Healthiest You, Saama Technologies and an HR advisor for Nimble Storage. She also serves on the planning and strategy committee board of Dignity Health and a member of Leadership Council of the Opportunity Fund. Debra is also a Senior Fellow of the American Leadership Forum.

She previously held profit board positions with Aspect Communications, Memestreams, Beyondwork, Onsite Dental, UPMO and the Concoursgroup. Also in addition she held advisory board positions with Kadiri, Icarian, CRI, Advanced HR, GPT3, Guru, Brassring, Clickhome, the Jackson Hole Group and ITM Software. Her affiliations to nonprofit organizations include Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the Center for Excellence in Nonprofits, the eBay Foundation, the Career Action Center, Next Door Solutions for Domestic Violence, the Entrepreneur’s Foundation, the Skoll Fund, the Healthtrust, the Valley Medical Foundation, the American Leadership Forum, the SHRM Foundation, and the Santa Clara University Business School.

Debra served as Senior Vice President of Corporate Services for 3Com until August, 1998. Prior to joining 3Com in November of 1983, Debra served as Corporate Staffing Manager for Hewlett Packard and as HR manager for HP’s Avondale division. Debra earned her M.S. in Industrial Relations from Iowa State University.

M.R. Rangaswami is a software executive, investor, entrepreneur, corporate eco-strategy expert, community builder and philanthropist. Recognized as a software business expert, he participated in the rapid expansion of the Silicon Valley software industry during his tenure as an executive at both large and small software companies. In 1997, he co-founded Sand Hill Group, one of the earliest “angel” investment firms, and was featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. He produced the prestigious Enterprise and Software conferences that were held in Silicon Valley. He was also listed on the Forbes “Midas” list of investors. M.R. is the publisher of SandHill.com, a leading website for entrepreneurs, VCs and CIOs.

In 2007, M.R. embarked on a new venture as the founder of the Corporate Eco Forum, an invitation-only membership organization for Global 500 companies that demonstrate a serious commitment to the environment as a business strategy issue.

In 2012, M.R. founded Indiaspora (a non-profit) to unite Indian Americans and to transform their success into meaningful impact in India and on the global stage.

Ronnie Lott is co-founder of HRJ capital, a private equity investment firm with offices in Silicon Valley, Chicago, New York, Zurich and Shanghai that manages approximately $1.8 billion in assets. He also is a member of Young President’s Organization, an exclusive network of the world’s most influential corporate presidents.

Ronnie began his investment experience as an early investor with Crosspoint Venture Partners and has extended it throughout the Sand Hill Road venture capital community. He has also built an extensive network of contacts within the financial services community at large, including the leveraged buyout and hedge fund sectors.

Ronnie is a graduate of the University of Southern California, where he received a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Administration. He was a first round draft pick of the San Francisco 49ers. He was elected to the NFL’s Hall of Fame in 2000.

Marc McMorris is a co-founder and managing director of Carrick Capital Partners where he is directly involved in the selection and growth guidance of successful companies in technology-enabled services including BPO, Transaction Processing, and Software as a Service (SaaS). He has extensive experience investing in minority deals, recaps, carve-outs, and performing public offerings and sell-side deals.  He has worked with companies valued from $50 million to $3 billion and equity investments ranging from $30 million to $400 million.

Previously, Marc was a managing director for General Atlantic, a growth-oriented $15 billion global private equity firm.  He was the lead or co-lead in approximately $900 million in investments in business services, financial services and software, which included the successful IPOs of numerous companies. During his tenure, Marc also led General Atlantic’s Palo Alto office. Prior to General Atlantic, Marc served as a vice president in the High-Tech Mergers and Acquisitions Group of Goldman Sachs, Inc. Before working for Goldman Sachs, he was an associate at Morgan Stanley, where he worked in the Telecom/Media Mergers & Acquisitions Group.

Marc earned his MBA with a concentration in finance and accounting from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and his BS in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.  Marc is a trustee for the university and is a member of the Investment Committee and the committees of Audit and Compliance; Budget and Finance; and Local, National and Global Engagement, which he chairs.

Dan Fairfax is the current CFO of Brocade. Fairfax was named chief financial officer of Brocade in June 2011, after serving as Brocade’s vice president of Worldwide Service and Support. He joined Brocade via the Company’s acquisition of Foundry Networks, where he also served as CFO.

Prior to joining Foundry Networks, Dan served as the CFO of a number of technology companies, including GoRemote Internet Communications, Ironside Technologies, Inc., ACTA Technology, and NeoVista Software. Prior to those appointments, he held a variety of senior financial management and operations positions at Siemens and Spectra-Physics.

Dan Fishback has led several highly successful software startups which specialized in applying analytics to solve complex business problems. As CEO of DemandTec, Dan introduced a ground-breaking analytical cloud solution for retail and consumer product companies, adopted by WalMart, Safeway, Target, Monoprix, Advanced Auto Parts and many other global Fortune 500 companies. DemandTec was acquired by IBM in 2012. Prior to leading DemandTec, Dan held sales and executive leadership positions at Ariba, Trading Dynamics, Hyperion Software, Arbor Software and Unisys. Dan also serves on the Board of Conversica, Moogsoft.com, Qumu (QUMU) and DemandHope, and has previously served on the boards of SPS Commerce (SPSC), CorVu Software (CRVU) and DemandTec (DMAN).

William Binch is highly respected as a champion of business intelligence applications and has successfully led sales teams at numerous blue-chip organizations in the IT industry. He is a professional independent director with extensive experience in Worldwide sales, enterprise applications and analytics. Besides Saama, he is on the Board of Directors at Callidus Cloud, where he serves as Lead Independent Director and MedeAnalytics. Earlier, he spent nine years in sales and sales management at IBM, four years as VP/General Manager at Itel, and three years as VP of Sales at Fortune. William was Senior Vice President of Worldwide Operations for Hyperion Inc., where he was responsible for over $430 million in global revenues. Before Hyperion, he was a senior executive for two companies, Business Objects and Prism, in the BI and data warehousing sector. Both went through successful IPOs during his tenure. He also spent five years at Oracle Corp. and received the most valuable employee award in 1992 while serving as Vice President of Strategic Accounts.

William received a B.S. at The University of Maryland. He also served as a Captain in the U.S. Marine Corp.

Dr. Tim Bussiek leads the overall Marketing activities for Saama, including market strategy, communications, demand generation, product marketing and customer success programs. He has over 20 years experience in enterprise software, heading up product, sales, development, support, marketing, and strategy functions. As such, Tim has been a key driver and visionary in Silicon Valley’s evolution of e-commerce, service-oriented architecture (SOA), cloud management, real-time enterprise (RTE), as well as analytics technologies and their adoption in advanced enterprise settings.

Before joining Saama, Tim held executive positions as CTO and VP Products at a number of IT startups with a focus on go-to-market execution. Previously he served 8 years in leading roles within SAP’s Product Marketing, covering applications such as Supplier Relationship Management (SRM), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Duet, Analytics, Enterprise Search, Employee Self-Services, and the SOA xApps. In his most recent role at SAP, he was responsible for the Business Development of SAP Value Prototyping – Cloud Hosting & Logistics Services, driving on-demand local innovation based on pre-assembled solutions, enterprise-class hosting and moving of complete landscapes across public and private clouds, with a focus on SAP HANA and other analytical applications from SAP.

Tim has a Masters in Economics and earned his Ph.D. exploring the interdependence of IT and economic behavior at the University of Freiburg, Germany.

Simon Ho is responsible for many important aspects of Saama’s business, including supporting the corporate agenda, practice areas and their sales strategies, leading the financial planning and analysis function, managing liquidity, fundraising efforts, and developing scalable financial strategies. He also oversees finance operations, managing relationships with auditors, tax consultants, attorneys and bankers, and heads up investor relations, risk management and corporate development.

Simon brings a wealth of background and executive experience to the global finance function at Saama, with two decades of related financial and leadership experience with technology companies in Silicon Valley. Most recently Simon was CFO at CellMax Life (bio pharma start up), and previously held executive positions at Digital Chocolate (a gaming company funded by Sequoia Capital & Kleiner Perkins), OpenWave (mobile software), and Pinnacle Systems (video systems). Simon spent his early years at Intel and then at Sun Microsystems where he built the foundation for his career. He then moved on to McAfee to build the finance operations from the ground up.

Simon holds an M.B.A. from University of Michigan in Finance and graduated with a B.A. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley.

Chris LaBruna is responsible for leading all aspects of Saama’s Global Sales function. He has been leading high performance field organizations for over 20 years. Chris is a strategic thinker who delivers consistent growth under all marketplace conditions. His customer-focused approach drives high customer satisfaction, along with predictable growth.

Before joining Saama, Chris was at Oracle for seven years, where he led the Enterprise Performance Management field organization in the Western U.S. to consistent and predictable year over year growth. Prior to that, Chris joined Hyperion Solutions in 2003, where he was responsible for the Western U.S. and Latin America. During his tenure, both geographies experienced impressive growth, which contributed to the 3.2B valuation at the time Hyperion was acquired by Oracle in 2007. Previous to Hyperion, Chris held leadership positions at Business Objects and IBM.

Chris holds a BA from New York University and an MS from Columbia University.