Adamas has zeroed in on providing solutions to patients dealing with Parkinson’s and other neurological diseases. Can you share your personal connection to the company’s mission and what led you to becoming the CEO last year?
It was a great opportunity for me to join Adamas. It’s a critical time in the company. We’re expanding, we’re maturing into a sustainable business, and for me it was a great opportunity to work in neurology, especially in the unmet needs space where we are working today. I usually focus on three areas when I explore opportunities and for Adamas it was no different. It’s about the impact to patients: are the solutions and therapeutics that a company’s working on actually going to make an impact?
Adamas has meaningful therapeutics and a late-state development efforts that were attractive to me.
In terms of the people, another great reason to join an organization, both the Board and the team has an intense passion to make an impact for patients which is right up my alley.
For me as a first time CEO, Adamas has offered me the ability to grow. As a background, I became invested in helping people early in my career. I served as enlisted and as an officer in the United States Army Reserves, I was an OR tech as an enlisted soldier and then I was an ICU nurse in the Army Reserves before becoming a nurse practitioner in transplantation at the University of Florida.
From the clinic I landed at a Bay Area biotech and then over the last few decades I worked to serve patients with serious illnesses both on the specialty side and on the orphan therapeutics side, across the globe, from the US to Europe to Asia to Latin America, at leading companies you may have heard of. Sangstat was in the Bay Area; I spent time at Genzyme both domestically and abroad; UCB, both domestically and abroad; and most recently at Retrophin in San Diego before taking the ball at Adamas.