Board of Directors
Jeffrey Leathe
Jeffrey Leathe was most recently the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board at Biocius Life Sciences, a venture backed company involved in developing high throughput instrumentation for mass spectrometry applications in pharmaceutical drug discovery and clinical diagnostic testing. Biocius was acquired by Agilent Technologies in February 2011. Prior to Biocius, Mr. Leathe served as the Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of BioTrove Inc., a venture backed company developing a high throughput PCR platform for use in drug discovery and development. Mr. Leathe was the chief architect of the sale of BioTrove to LIFE Technologies in December 2009.
Before joining BioTrove, Mr. Leathe served as Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer for Apogent Technologies from 1990-2003. Apogent, a formerly NYSE-listed global manufacturer of life science research and clinical diagnostic instruments and consumables, was subsequently sold to Fisher Scientific. At Apogent, Jeff managed numerous life science companies around the globe and was a key driver of acquisitions and related public equity and debt financings in excess of $3 billion in the life sciences space.
Jeff is a director and chairman of the audit committee for Bottomline Technologies, a NASDAQ-listed software firm, and a director of Integra BioSciences, a private life science company based in Switzerland. Jeff received his MBA from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, his B.S. from the University of New Hampshire and holds his CPA.
Andrew G. Raguskus
Andy has over 40 years of experience in delivering high tech products to market, 18 of them in the hearing device industry. He was the Senior Vice President of Operations at ReSound Corporation in the 1990’s and served Sonic Innovations as President and CEO from 1996 to 2005, where he led the company to become one of the medical device industry’s entrepreneurial success stories.
Mr. Raguskus was named “Utah Entrepreneur of the Year” in 2001 by Ernst & Young, CNN, USA Today, and NASDAQ. He began his career designing satellites as a U.S. Air Force officer and was part of the design team for the original CT scanner at General Electric Medical Systems. Currently, Mr. Raguskus is also the CEO of OtoKinetics Inc. a venture backed startup that is developing a fully implantable hearing device similar to a cochlear implant. Mr. Raguskus earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Darshana Zaveri
Darshana Zaveri joined Catalyst in 2006 after several years of experience in the life science and pharmaceutical industries. Prior to Catalyst, she was an investigator at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. where she worked on drug development programs in oncology, metabolic disease, and immunology. Her professional experience also includes work at Genome Therapeutics Corporation, a Massachusetts-based biotechnology company, at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and internships at the United Nations and Innovest Strategic Advisory Services.
Darshana Zaveri has led Catalyst’s investments in Hepregen, Augmenix, and Lantos. She serves on the board of Lantos, observes on the boards of Hepregen and Augmenix, and works closely with Portfolio company Allegro Diagnostics.
Darshana has authored several publications, including scientific journal articles. She received a Master in Public Administration from Harvard University, a Master in Cell and Molecular Biology from Boston University, and a BS in Biochemistry from Bombay University in Bombay, India.
Gaye Bok
Gaye joined Excel Venture Management in 2010, and brings more than 15 years of operating experience in business development, new product development, and strategic planning to Excel’s investment process. Previously, Gaye headed up business and commercial development at Microbia, a bio-based chemical company. She also served as Senior Director of Business Development of Synthetic Genomics where she was the first non-founder employee, and as Business Development Manager at Cabot Corporation, a publicly traded materials science company.
Gaye received her M.B.A in Finance and International Management from MIT’s Sloan School and her A.B. from Harvard University.
Enrico Petrillo, MD, Managing Director, Excel Venture Management
Dr. Petrillo has a wealth of experience as a venture investor, healthcare consultant, entrepreneur, and physician that has been instrumental in the success of CB Health Ventures (CBHV), two funds which he co-founded with Rick Blume. Enrico has been advising and building successful healthcare and IT companies for over 20 years. He initiated investments in nanoMR, Aileron, MedVentive ,Saladax Biomedical, Pathogenetix, Lantos, SpringLeaf, BioTrove (Acquired by Life Technologies-LIFE), BIOCIUS/BioTrove Spin-out (acquired by Agilent Technologies – A) , Quovadx (now Healthvision), eBenX (acquired by SHPS), and Morphotek (acquired by Eisai Co. , Ltd – Japan ). Enrico has been a Director and/or an Observer at GeneOhm (acquired by Becton Dickinson – BDX)] , Exact (EXAS) , Aileron Therapeutics, MedVentive, Pathogenetix, Saladax Biomedical, ShapeUp, SpringLeaf, Aventura, Lantos Technologies, BioTrove, Morphotek, Quovadx, and eBenX.
Previously he was a partner at Fletcher Spaght, a Boston-based consulting firm spun out of Boston Consulting Group that specializes in strategy and market consulting for multi-stage medical and IT companies. He is a current advisor to the Department of Defense, Office of the Secretary and affiliated agencies.
In addition to being a full time partner at Excel, Enrico is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medicine at Boston University. Dr. Petrillo earned both his undergraduate and M.D. degrees from Tufts University, and completed his internship and residency at Harvard-affiliated hospitals in Boston.
