Team

Jay Wohlgemuth MD

Diagnostics, Companion Diagnostics, Population Health, Digital Health

Dr. J has years of experience leading healthcare innovation efforts in diagnostic testing, medical devices, virtual care and digital..

Paul Owen

Diagnostics, Companion Diagnostics, Genomics, Digital Health, Commercialization

Paul Owen most recently served as President and Interim CEO of imaware™ which provides a digital health platform experience…

Ray Tabibiazar, MD

Biotechnology, Life Science Tools, Drug Development, Diagnostics, Companion Diagnostics, Digital Health, Cardiology

Dr. Tabibiazar is a seasoned executive with leadership experience in the healthcare and biopharma industries including venture…

Franklin R. Cockerill, III, MD

Diagnostics, Companion Diagnostics, IVDs, Infectious Diseases, Pathology, Health Systems

Dr. Cockerill most recently served as the Chief Medical Officer and as a Director of the Board of Analyte Health located in Chicago, Illinois.

Dr. Rick L. Pesano, MD, PHD

Diagnostics, Companion Diagnostics, Genomics, Digital Health, Commercialization

Dr. Pesano has broad experience in Medical Diagnostics, Drug Development, Public Health and academia. He served..

Richard A. Bender, MD

Cancer Diagnostics, Cancer Therapeutics, Cancer Care

Dr. Bender spent 25 years in clinical practice the majority spent serving as the Medical Director for Oncology / Hematology for Kaiser…

Peter Kuhn, PHD

Cancer Diagnostics, Cancer Therapeutics, Molecular Diagnostics, Genomics, Convergent Sciences

Dr. Kuhn is a Professor at USC, the director of USC’s CSI-Cancer Institute. His vision of translating innovation in research to meaningful…

Steve Goldberg MD, MBA

Diagnostics, Employer and Healthplan Population Health, Health Systems, Digital Health

Dr. Goldberg works to drive innovation and value in population health and precision medicine.  He serves as a fractional chief medical officer…

Andrew D. Pearle, MD.

Orthopedic Surgery, Sports Medicine, Computer Assisted Robotic Surgery, Advanced Imaging

Dr. Andrew D. Pearle is the Chief of the Sports Medicine Institute at the Hospital for Special Surgery.He is an Associate Team Physician…

Chet Robson, DO, MBA

Retail Healthcare, Employer and Healthplan Population Health, Digital Health, Medical Informatics, Pediatrics

Dr. Robson has a long career in healthcare innovation with significant experience in medical informatics, digital health and…

Micheal Mina MD, PhD

Lab Medicine/Clinical Pathology, Diagnostics, Infectious Diseases, Epidemiology, Public Health, AI and Applied Math, Digital and Virtual Care

Dr. Mina is a physician-scientist and executive leader with a focus at the intersection of biotechnology and data science, AI, healthcare…

Bill Haack

Cancer Diagnostics, Molecular Diagnostics Market Development, Commercialization, Market Access

Mr. Haack is CEO and co-founder of Cadex Genomics, which focuses on blood-based molecular testing to improve the management of patients with …. 

Mark Y. Liu

Legal Cousel

Mark Y. Liu is a corporate and capital markets attorney with nearly 20 years of experience advising companies in various stages of development…

Paul Boranian

Firm Operator

Paul Boranian is an accomplished operations manager with experience in the healthcare consulting industry Currently, Paul…

Jay Wohlgemuth MD

Managing Partner

Dr. J has years of experience leading healthcare innovation efforts in diagnostic testing, medical devices, virtual care and digital health, pharmaceutical and companion diagnostics development. Dr. J served as CMO, CSO and SVP for Quest Diagnostics over a period of 14 years. In that role, he was responsible for R&D, Medical Affairs, Medical Quality and Regulatory. He also ran Quest’s self-insured health plan for over 60,000 members as well as the Employer Population Health business. Dr. J ran Quest’s scientific and medical response to Covid-19 and received a C. Everett Koop Award for best population health program in 2020 for his work with Quest’s employee health plan.
 
He served as CMO of HealthTap, a virtual care company and he worked previously for Genentech / Roche as the development team leader for Ocrelizumab (Ocrevus) in multiple sclerosis and rheumatology and director of diagnostics for programs outside of oncology. Dr. J was co-founder, CMO and VP R&D for CareDx, a leader in testing for transplant patients, for which he was awarded Technology Pioneer 2005 at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He served as chairman of the board of the Personalized Medicine Coalition.
 
Dr. J grew up in Oklahoma and earned his bachelor’s degree in biology from Harvard College and his medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine, where he also served a fellowship in cardiovascular medicine. He serves as Trustee of the The Anne and Henry Zarrow Foundation which focuses on providing for basic human needs in Oklahoma.

Paul Owen

Partner

Paul Owen most recently served as President and Interim CEO of imaware™ which provides a digital health platform experience that offers advanced home-based testing and monitoring. Paul has had a very productive and successful career in developing and bringing healthcare innovation to market. He previously served as Chief Business Officer and COO for Kailos Genetics and CEO of OneOme, an innovator in precision medicine and pharmacogenetics, co-founded by Mayo Clinic. While leading OneOme they were recognized by Fast Company as the top 22 of 50 most innovative companies in the world, #2 in biotech, awarded 2019 MedTech Breakthrough Award, Best Overall Genomics Company, 2018 Inc. Magazine. Prior to joining OneOme Paul led global commercialization for Invitae, a leader in hereditary disease diagnostics testing. Previously, Paul served as Vice Chair of Global Business Development for Mayo Clinic and was the leader of Mayo Medical Laboratories’ global commercial team – one of the world’s largest full-service reference labs and held leadership roles at Zimmer-Biomet and Boston Scientific.

Paul also serves on the Board of Directors for OpalGenix, Oncodea, and the The Redemption Project and as an Executive Advisor to the University of MN Ventures Group, Decode Health, Phenomix Sciences and Spesana. He received his B.S. in business administration from the University of Wisconsin – Stout and lives in Minneapolis, MN.

Ray Tabibiazar, MD

Partner

Dr. Tabibiazar is a seasoned executive with leadership experience in the healthcare and biopharma industries, including venture capital, pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. As a clinician-entrepreneur and as managing director of 526 Ventures, he has focused on creating new ventures in the form of new companies or spinouts to translate innovative science into commercially viable products – with an outstanding track record particularly in advanced biopharmaceutical development strategies. Dr. Tabibiazar serves as Chair at SalioGen Therapeutics and previously led Aravive Biologics as CEO, served as SVP, Corporate Development and Business Strategy at Twist Bioscience and as a Venture Partner at Bay City Capital as well as several other roles. Prior to moving to industry, Dr. Tabibiazar was a practicing cardiologist and a faculty member at Stanford University, having trained as a physician scientist at Harvard Medical School and a cardiologist at Stanford Medical Center.

FRANKLIN R. COCKERILL, III, MD

Partner

Dr. Cockerill has been a leader in development and commercialization of diagnostics and medical services across disease areas and technologies. He most recently served as the CEO and CMO of Analyte Health, a leader in virtual care diagnostic services. Before joining Analyte Health, Dr. Cockerill was the Chair of the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, Mayo Clinic, and President and CEO of Mayo Medical Laboratories. While at Mayo he also carried a named professorship, the Ann and Leo Markin Professor of Medicine and Microbiology at the Mayo Medical School. Dr. Cockerill and his research team at Mayo developed numerous real-time PCR assays, which have significant advantages over conventional culture-based assays, and include the first commercially available rapid PCR test for Anthrax. This work has resulted in 10 patents and 56 licensed technologies. Recently, Dr. Cockerill provided a pivotal role for one of the first clinical studies of self-swabbing for COVID-19 infection in the US. He helped coordinate the swift development and execution of the study, along with the Gates Foundation, Everett Clinic (United Healthcare) and Quest Diagnostics, in March 2020 which resulted in one of the earliest FDA emergency use self-testing methods for COVID-19.

Dr. Cockerill is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology. He has served as Chair of the Subcommittee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing, Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI), Chair, Microbiology Devices Panel of the Medical Devices Advisory Committee of the US FDA, Board Member and Program Director, of the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP), Director, American Clinical Laboratory Association Board; Director, Board of Scientific Counselors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Editor, Journal of Clinical Microbiology. Dr. Cockerill was the recipient of the BD Award, sponsored by the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), the highest honor bestowed upon a clinical microbiologist in the United States.

Dr. Rick L. Pesano, MD, PhD

Partner

Dr. Pesano has broad experience in Medical Diagnostics, Drug Development, Public Health and academia. He served as VP R&D as well as CMO, Global Markets and Precision Medicine for Quest Diagnostics. In this role, he was responsible for R&D across Quest Diagnostics as well as for companion diagnostics and global markets R&D and medical support. During his time at Quest, Dr. Pesano developed and implemented collaborative programs with the Center for Disease Control to partner in the areas of Hepatis C, Zika Virus and emerging infections and led the medical and R&D team in the formation of Quest’s Global Diagnostics Network. He has significant experience working on development programs with FDA.

Dr. Pesano previously worked for Monogram Biosciences, LabCorp and Pfizer where we lead drug and biomarker development efforts in Infectious Diseases. He trained in Infectious Diseases and is an internationally recognized expert in HIV, HCV and emerging infections. Dr. Pesano attended undergraduate at Canisius College, graduate school at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Bowman Gray School of Medicine for his med school. He now lives in Palm Springs, California.

Richard A. Bender, MD

Partner

Dr. Bender spent 25 years in clinical practice the majority spent serving as the Medical Director for Oncology / Hematology for Kaiser Permanente in San Diego. In 2002 he transitioned to the diagnostic industry where he has been the Medical Director for Hematology / Oncology for Quest Diagnostics, Inc. and the CMO for Agendia, Inc. and Signal Genetics, Inc., both molecular diagnostics companies. He has also served on the executive board of the San Diego Hospice and American Cancer Society. He continues to teach at the UCLA School of Medicine and serves as an expert reviewer in oncology for the Medical Board of California and was recently selected to be a consultant for the Medical Devices Advisory Committee of the FDA. Dr. Bender is the author or co-author of over 80 peer-reviewed scientific articles and numerous book chapters and has been invited to speak all over the world as an expert in oncology diagnostics. He continues in clinical practice as a member of the Oncology Institute.

PETER KUHN, PHD

Partner

Dr. Kuhn is a Professor at USC, the director of USC’s CSI-Cancer Institute. His vision of translating innovation in research to meaningful products for patient care is driving his everyday efforts. He also serves as Dean’s Professor of Biological Sciences, Professor of Medicine, Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering at USC as well as Director of the USC Michelson Convergent Science Institute in Cancer (CSI-Cancer) and the deputy director of the Convergent Science – Virtual Cancer Center. He holds a chair as Honorary Professor of Cancer Science at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom.Dr. Kuhn is a physicist who trained initially at the Julius Maximilians Universität Würzburg, Germany, before receiving his Masters in Physics at the University of Albany. Previously, Dr. Kuhn held a faculty appointment at Stanford where he established the structural genomics research enterprise and focused his research on technology developments in structural biology that were utilized by breakthrough research such as Dr. Roger Kornberg’s (Nobel prize 2006) structure determination of the RNA Polymerase. Dr. Kuhn joined Scripps and established the Physics Oncology program where he advanced technologies that led to the structure determination of the human b2AR GPCR with collaborators including Dr. Brian Kobilka (Nobel prize 2012).

His research and inventions have resulted in over 300 peer-reviewed publications, which have been cited over twenty-thousand times. Technologies developed by Dr. Kuhn have been the foundation of multiple healthcare companies and his research has been licensed to numerous companies.

Steve Goldberg

Dr. Goldberg works to drive innovation and value in population health and precision medicine.  He serves as a fractional chief medical officer, providing clinical strategy and operations leadership for early-stage companies serving self-insured employers, health plans and physician organizations.  He has published on employee health and comprehensive medication management enhanced with pharmacogenomics.  Steve most recently served as VP, Chief Health Officer, Employee and Population Health for Quest Diagnostics.  In that role he led employee health, where his team drove improved member experience, improved population health and bent cost trends for the company’s 60,000 plan members. 

Before joining Quest, Steve was SVP and CMO at WellCare Health Plans, a multi-billion-dollar provider of government-sponsored managed care services. He has previously served in executive medical management roles with Aetna, Express Scripts, Humana and Excellus BCBS.  Steve earned an MD from Jefferson Medical College, completed the United Health Services Family Medicine Residency in Binghamton, New York, and earned an MBA at Binghamton University. He is board certified in Family Medicine and maintains a part-time clinical practice in Louisville, KY.

Andrew D. Pearle, M.D.

Partner

Dr. Pearle is the Chief of the Sports Medicine Institute at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York and Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College. He is a Team Physician for the New York Mets and an Orthopedic Consultant for the UFC. Dr. Pearle is an internationally known innovator in orthopedics including his pioneering clinical work in robotic knee surgery, partial knee replacement, and ACL surgery. Dr Pearle created the first computer assisted surgery laboratory in the US, which now collaborates closely with the Biomechanic laboratory at Hospital for Special Surgery. A former Editor-in-Chief of the Orthopedic Journal Techniques in Knee Surgery, Dr. Pearle has published over 200 peer review articles focusing primarily on outcomes of robotic knee surgery, foundational biomechanical studies on ACL function, and novel uses of MRI in prevention and management of ACL injury. In 2007, Dr. Pearle performed the first robotic partial knee replacement in the New York region. He has now performed thousands of these procedures and is the leading world expert and thought leader on the use of robotic technology for partial and total knee replacement.

Chet Robson, DO, MBA

Partner

Dr. Robson has a long career in healthcare innovation with significant experience in medical informatics, digital health and retail pharmacy. He currently serves as CMO of Imaware, an at-home testing company and MDisrupt, a digital healthcare company providing access to a network of medical experts to assist in development and implementation of healthcare solution development and deployment. He previously served senior roles at Walgreens including Chief Medical Officer where we he oversaw medical aspects of the pharmacy business and COVID response as well as numerous programs in digital health, consumer engagement and collaborative programs in genetics, evidence-based medicine and many other areas. Prior to Walgreens Dr. Robson served as Chief Medical Information Officer for Adventist Health Partners a leading health system in the Midwest. At Walgreens he was the recipient of the Global Divisional Leadership and Champion of Champions award for Pharmacy Safety and at Adventist he was given the Distinguished Leadership Award. Dr. Robson trained in medicine at Midwestern University and then received his MBA in Healthcare Delivery Science from Dartmouth.

Michael Mina MD, PhD

Dr. Mina is a physician-scientist and executive leader with a focus at the intersection of biotechnology and data science, AI, healthcare product development, and regulation.   Dr. Mina was most recently CSO and President Research and Public Health for eMed, a company focused on consumer centric testing solutions delivered with virtual medical supervision.  He has served as a fractional CMO and BOD member for Quantum SI, a protein sequencing company, and a fractional CMO for Detect (at-home infectious diseases testing) and LivePerson (healthcare AI).   Dr. Mina received his MD and PhD from Emory with a focus on Population Biology, Infectious Diseases and Evolution.   He completed post-doctoral fellowships at Princeton in Applied Math in Infectious Diseases and at Harvard Medical School in Genetics and Immune Engineering.   He also completed a residency in Clinical Pathology at Harvard Mass General Brigham and held a faculty appointment as Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, Immunology and Pathology at Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute.   While in this capacity, Dr. Mina was the medical director for the Broad’s COVID-19 testing services and had a major impact in the field through those services as well as through his work in educating the emerging field on the appropriate role of antigen vs. PCR testing.  Dr. Mina has been widely recognized with numerous awards for his innovative efforts in healthcare during his career.

Bill Haack

Mr. Haack is CEO and co-founder of Cadex Genomics, which focuses on blood-based molecular testing to improve the management of patients with metastatic cancer.  He has over 20 years of experience in life sciences.  He started his career at Genentech where he led the commercial operations team and the successful launch of Rituxan and Herceptin.  He was an early employee at Genomic Health, where he helped lead and was instrumental in the launch and commercial success of all three Oncotype DX products. Under Mr. Haack’s leadership, Genomic Health grew from a company with no revenue to over $300M in annual revenues. Mr. Haack also led the launch of Genomic Health in Europe, where he led the start-up of their headquarters in Geneva and the establishment of commercial teams in the United Kingdom, Italy and Germany. Mr. Haack holds an MA degree in Economics and Econometrics from Cal State University Hayward and lives in Redwood City, CA.

Mark Y. Liu

Partner

Mark Y. Liu is a corporate and capital markets attorney with nearly 20 years of experience advising companies in various stages of development with respect to investments and financing, corporate governance and M&A. Mr. Liu has counseled companies and investment banks in initial public offerings (IPOs) on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq Global Select Market, and the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong, and has negotiated cross-border capital markets transactions across industries, including biotechnology. A former pre-med, Mr. Liu holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Washington University in St. Louis and a J.D. from the University of Iowa College of Law.

Paul Boranian

Partner

Paul Boranian is an accomplished operations manager with experience in the healthcare consulting industry. Currently, Paul serves as the head of operations for Trusted Health Advisors. In this role, Paul is responsible for managing all facets of the brand, including client relations, project management, and financial operations. Paul brings exceptional skills in operations management, digital marketing, financial management and communications and has been instrumental in the founding and success of Trusted Health Advisors.

Prior to joining Trusted Health Advisors, Paul co-founded Golf Daddy, a wildly popular golf training aid company that has taken social media by storm. His expertise in media management, computer science, videography and editing has been critical to the success of Golf Daddy. This experience has also given Paul a unique perspective on the importance of strong operations management and client relations, which he has brought to his work with Trusted Health Advisors. Paul graduated from Pepperdine with a degree BS in Business Administration.