Greg Brandenburg

Greg Brandenburg joined Columbia Basin Health Association (CBHA) in February of 1997 as its Chief Financial Officer and has served as Chief Executive Officer of Columbia Basin Health Association since October of 1998. He has grown the organization from a single site to four sites and increased its operating budget from $4 million to over $36 million in 2010. CBHA has been selected several times by Washington CEO Magazine as one of the "Top 5 Best Companies to Work for in Washington State" in the Non Profit Category. In 2003 the Washington Rural Health Association selected Greg as the recipient for the "Outstanding Contributions to Rural Health Award."

Greg is widely recognized as a pioneer and thought-leader in the use of health-care informatics. Under Greg’s leadership, CBHA has several prestigious honors, the AMDIS (Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems) Award in 2004 for achievement in the field of applied medical informatics. CBHA also received the Cecilia B. Abhold Award for Excellence from Farmworker Health Services, Inc. in Washington D.C. in 2007 and 2010. In 2008 CBHA was awarded the HIMSS Nicholas E. Davies Community Health Award of Excellence. CBHA figured prominently in the report released by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in 2009 that examined how CBHA uses health information technology to improve health care quality and patient safety as well as promote care coordination and continuity.

Sailesh Chutani, Ph.D., CEO and Co-founder

Sailesh has 25 years of experience in creating successful new businesses and products. Prior to Mobisante, he managed $100m worth of exploratory research investments in emerging technologies to identify and seed new businesses at Microsoft. He also led the turnaround of the WebTV acquisition into a profitable business, launching multiple new product and services with revenues that peaked at $220m. He has had business and technical leadership roles in companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and Transarc – a start up acquired by IBM that became a billion dollar business.

Sailesh has championed cell phone technologies in healthcare since 2005 and he co-authored the book, "Technology at the Margins" that takes a global view of the impact of the mobile phone on health-care, education, micro-finance and resource management.

Loretta Little (Observer)

Loretta Little is a managing director at WRF Capital. She concentrates primarily on investments in healthcare and biotechnology and is responsible for identifying and developing startup opportunities and investment decisions in new companies. Ms. Little is WRF Capital’s investment manager for Pacific Bioscience Laboratories (Clarisonic), Corus Pharma (acquired by Gilead Sciences), Amnis, EKOS, Targeted Growth and GlobeImmune. Additionally Ms. Little is the investment manager and board observer for MobiSante, Accium Biosciences, Modumetal and Mirador Biomedical.

Ms. Little serves on the boards of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) and the Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition (GSEC) at the Foster School of Business, University of Washington and the Washington medical technology angel network –WINGS. She also does committee work for the Alliance of Angels, the Washington Biotechnology and Biomedical Association (WBBA) and the Washington Global Health Nexus Working Group.

Carlos Olivares

Carlos Olivares took over as Executive Director of the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic (YVFWC) in 1986. Since then, YVFWC has grown from about 150 employees to over 1,600 employees providing medical, dental, mental health and social services to over 120,000 people at 22 facilities in Washington and Oregon. He is a founding board member and past chairman of Community Health Network of Washington/Community Health Plan of Washington, agencies that administer state-subsidized medical insurance for over 250,000 patients. He was a founding member and chairman of the board of Adaptis, a Seattle company that provides computerized tracking of health insurance plans. Governor Christine Gregoire named him to the Washington Prescription Drug Assistance Foundation.

He is currently serving as a board member of LifeCenter Northwest and the Central Washington Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Carlos’ commitment to the health of farm workers and others has led him to positions on the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC), the Northwest Regional Primary Care Association and the Oregon Primary Care Association. The NACHC awarded Carlos the "Luis Garcia" national award to recognize him as an outstanding administrator of a migrant health center. He serves on the board of directors of The Memorial Foundation, which raises funds and allocates resources for health care in the Yakima Valley, and he was recently appointed to the Board of Trustees of Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences, a new college of osteopathic medicine in Washington State.(repeat) In 2003, he was honored by the Washington Health Foundation as the recipient of the “Heroes of Healthcare” Award for Leadership.

David M. Zar, CTO and Co-founder

David has 18 years of experience in various aspects of ultrasound hardware and software design and development. He has been a research associate at Washington University in St. Louis where he worked on ultrasound, high-speed telecommunications, asynchronous circuits and meta-stability analysis of synchronizers.

He was a co-founder of two start-ups; Z&R Technologies and BLENDICS. He has written device drivers and user applications, as well as designed hardware used in ultrasound imaging. He has a track record of pursuing cutting edge research and translating research into successful products.

Vidar Jorgensen

Vidar Jorgensen is the Chairman of the World Health Care Congress. He is also a majority owner of several industry-based conference and research companies. These in turn own and manage over 200 conferences focused on biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, health-care, insurance, financial services, entertainment and infrastructure development, as well as several membership-based research groups. The conference companies include World Health Care Congress, Cambridge Health Tech Institute, Barnett International, and BIO-IT World.

Jorgensen is also the President and member of the Board of Directors of Grameen America, a microfinance organization started in 2007 in Jackson Heights, NY. In addition to Grameen America, Jorgensen is a supporter of Grameen projects worldwide, including Grameen Healthcare.

Matthew O’Donnell

Following undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral training at Notre Dame and Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. O’Donnell joined General Electric Corporate Research and Development Center in Schenectady, NY in 1980, where he worked on medical electronics, including MRI and ultrasound imaging systems. In 1990, he moved to University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI where he held appointments in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and in Biomedical Engineering. In 1998, he was named the Jerry W. and Carol L. Levin Professor of Engineering. From 1999-2006, he also served as Chair of the Biomedical Engineering Department.

During 2006, he moved to the University of Washington in Seattle, WA where he is now the Frank and Julie Jungers Dean of Engineering and also a Professor of Bioengineering. His most recent research has explored new imaging modalities, including elasticity imaging, in vivo microscopy, optoacoustic arrays, optoacoustic contrast agents for molecular imaging and therapy, thermal strain imaging, and catheter based devices. He has won numerous awards, including the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Notre Dame. He is a fellow of the IEEE and AIMBE and is a member of the Washington State Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.

Gordon Perkin

Dr. Gordon Perkin is a Senior Fellow with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program (retired 2005). Perkin has been associated with the foundation since 1995, when the first grants in global health were awarded. From 1999 through 2001, he was responsible for the development and operation of the foundation’s Global Health Program.

Over a nineteen-year period (1980-1999), Perkin served as President of the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), an international nonprofit organization dedicated to improving health, especially the health of women and children. As a physician with more than 40 years of experience in international health and family planning, Perkin also spent 14 years with the Ford Foundation, where he worked as program officer in a variety of international health and population projects. He served as a long-term consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO) on the design and research strategy of the Special Program in Human Reproduction, and has consulted with several other WHO programs. He was a member of the Committee on Contraceptive Development of the Institute of Medicine, and a board member of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the Alan Guttmacher Institute and the Global Health Council.

In 2010 Dr. Perkin was inducted as an officer in the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest civilian honor.

Christopher H. Porter

Christopher H. Porter, Ph.D. (Chris) has had a successful 34-year career in the medical device and biotechnology industry. He has been influential in introducing over 30 medical products and is the holder of 41 US patents. Chris has served in a variety of positions (CEO, General Manager, top technical and top manufacturing positions) in both major corporations (3M, Johnson and Johnson and Pfizer) and early stage medical companies. These experiences have given him an excellent overview on how to start, value, finance, organize and lead a successful medical products business. He has been an important part of creating in excess of $2.0 billion dollars in shareholder value. Chris is, and has been, a CEO and/or board member of numerous public and private companies. He has founded, invented products for, and/or contributed heavily to the success of numerous medical device companies and started three divisions within major corporations. He is an experienced and successful fundraiser including venture financing, corporate partnerships, out-licensing, acquisitions (both buyer and seller) and IPO’s. He has conducted due diligence for several venture firms and has made a number of investments in early stage companies.

At present, Chris runs Medical Genesis, a consulting firm and medical device incubator. He is also devoting most of his efforts towards assisting early-stage companies, mentoring and participating in entrepreneurial education and technology transfer at Seattle University and the University of Washington. He serves on several boards and screening committees and is also very active in several non-profits. Chris has a Ph.D. in Chemical and Material Engineering.