Our highly experienced management team has taken multiple projects from concept through method development and into commercial-scale production.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Paul Goldenheim
CEO
Paul is trained as a pulmonary physician and has a long history in pharmaceutical research, development and management. He has held roles as CSO of Purdue Pharma, President of TransForm Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Johnson & Johnson), Vice-Chairman of Hypnion (acquired by Eli Lilly), and as Director of Promedior (acquired by Roche). Dr. Goldenheim received his AB from Harvard College magna cum laude with highest honors in biochemical sciences and his MD from Harvard Medical School.
President of One Equity Partners (“OEP”), a private equity firm that currently manages $7 billion for over 100 individual & institutional investors. In 1980, joined Citigroup Venture Capital (President 1994-2000) and in 2001, founded OEP which became the private equity business of JP Morgan Chase before it was spun out in early 2015. Dick has a BA in East Asian Studies from Harvard College (1975), an MBA from Harvard Business School (1980), was a member of the 1976 and 1980 U.S. Olympic Rowing Teams & was a world champion in 1974.
James (“Jeb”) Besser
Director
23 year managing member and General Partner of Manchester Management LLC, a family of investment funds that invests in public and private equities, primarily in the health care space. Previously Jeb worked at Highfields Capital and Media Group Investors in a variety of investment orientated roles. Jeb is the largest shareholder of Modular Medical, Inc. where he has been actively involved in developing Modular’s commercial go-to-market strategy since 2018. Jeb graduated from Brown University in 1997 with a B.A. in History, where he was a varsity rower and team captain.
SENIOR MEMBERS
Tim Bowser
CTO
Tim has amassed over 30 years’ experience in Pharma – across R&D, Business Development, GM & API roles. He previously held his own consultancy business, providing his expertise to industry and academic partners across pharmaceutical natural products & synthetic biology. Before this, he was Head of Australian Operations and R&D for Sun Pharmaceutical Industries controlled substances division. Tim has developed opiate alkaloid products from lab to market, co-authoring 3 Science papers on API biosynthesis along the way. He holds a BSc in Chemistry and from 2013-2015 was an Industrial Placement Fellow at the University of York, overseeing a range of new technology projects.
From 2013-2018, Jørgen served as Evolva’s Chief Scientific Officer, running a five-site R&D organization with the full complement of synthetic biology, from idea stage and bioinformatics over strain development to scale-up of upstream and downstream processes. Before that and since 2005, he has directed the activities of the Evolva Copenhagen laboratory. Previously he worked at Poalis Biotech, Carlsberg Laboratory, Danish Technical University and Aarhus University.
Esben Halkjær Hansen
SVP, R&D
Esben has 14 years of experience within microbial production strain development, pathway discovery, and optimization. From 2011-2017, Esben served as Program Manager at Evolva, running several different strain development programs and has successfully brought projects from idea phase, over strain optimization to production. Previously he has worked at Poalis Biotech. He has a PhD in Molecular Biology/Pharmaceutical Science from University of Copenhagen.
SENIOR MEMBERS
CONSULTANTS
Neil Goldsmith
CBO
Neil has more than 35 years’ life sciences experience as an executive, board member (and chair) and serial entrepreneur. He has built companies in several sectors, including industrial biotech, therapeutics and lab instrumentation. He was founder of Evolva and CEO from 2004-2017. Neil is currently chair of the boards of Aida Oncology and Unibio, a member of the board of Chosa Oncology and Director of Strategy at BaseLaunch. Neil has a 1st class honours degree in Zoology from Oxford University.
Paula Hicks
Senior consultant - Technology & IP
Paula has 20 years of technology expertise in diverse industries utilizing biotechnology. From 2011 to 2018 Paula held several senior technical leadership roles at Evolva Inc. successfully scaling up multiple projects and managing programs with industrial, university, and government partners. Prior to that she served as a technical program manager for biopharmaceutical projects at Bend Research, Inc. (now Lonza). Hicks started her career at Cargill leading development of new processes for food ingredients. She holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from North Carolina State University.
With over 20 years’ of expertise in Process Engineering and Technical Development, Brian’s experience spans the pharma, synthetic biology and food industries. Previously he was Technical Development Manager at Sun Pharma’s controlled substances division, leading teams in delivering a wide portfolio of projects. Prior to that he held roles at GSK and Merck (MSD). Brian’s work has covered many functions, including: API R&D, Technology Transfer, New Product Introduction, validation, production, capital projects and EHS. He has a BEng in Process Engineering from