Joy Parr Drach is President of Advanced Animal Diagnostics and brings a unique combination of agribusiness and new product introduction expertise to the company. She was a founder and senior partner of Entira, a management and marketing consulting firm for agribusiness companies, where she led strategic planning programs and implemented management and marketing programs with clients ranging from small start-ups to Fortune 100 industry leaders. She has successfully launched more than 30 new products ranging from U.S. dairy parlors to global herbicides and spray equipment, including product development, pricing strategies, distribution plans, sales training and marketing/promotion planning and execution.
Parr Drach is also actively involved in her family’s grain and purebred livestock operation. She earned a bachelor of science in Agricultural Communications from the University of Illinois, and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Chicago.
David was most recently vice president of engineering and product development at McKesson Corp./Parata Systems, LLC in Durham, where he grew the engineering team from less than 10 to more than 160 employees. Calderwood developed and launched the industry's leading pharmacy robotic systems. He previously worked on the first color inkjet printer and led the design and commercialization of the first wide-format ink-jet printer technologies at Hewlett Packard Company.
Andrew brings experience in both private and publicly-held companies as former chief financial officer and corporate secretary at Trimeris, Inc. and chief accounting officer at Icoria, Inc. and predecessor company Paradigm Genetics. Graham is a certified public accountant who began his career as an auditor at Ernst & Young in Raleigh.
Mitch combines practical and academic experience as co-owner and manager of Kingsmill Farm II, a Holstein dairy in Durham with an international reputation. He was formerly assistant professor in the Department of Animal Science at North Carolina State University and has published numerous papers on the impact of mastitis on reproduction.
Mr. Linn most recently served as Alliance Manager, Business Development, BD Technologies, in Research Triangle Park. In recent years, among other duties, he managed the BD Technologies Incubator and was involved with 15 emerging companies in the area. These companies have created over 500 jobs and raised almost $500 million dollars in VC Funding, Grants, or Corporate Funding. Before his 22 years at BD, he was a researcher at Research Triangle Institute and Union Carbide Ag Products. Mr. Linn has 21 Publications and 15 issued US Patents, including several in a successful molecular diagnostic product commercialized by BD. He graduated from UNC at Chapel Hill with a BS in Chemistry. He is the member of several professional societies including, American Chemical Society (ACS), American Society for Microbiology (ASM), and Licensing Executives Society (LES).
A partner in the Raleigh firm, Smith, Anderson, Blount, Dorsett, Mitchell & Jernigan LLP, Mr. Mason has extensive experience representing technology and life sciences companies at all stages of development with particular emphasis on emerging and entrepreneurial enterprises. Prior to joining Smith Anderson, Mr. Mason co-founded Triangle-based Hutchison + Mason in 1996 where his leadership helped the firm grow to 20 lawyers specializing in meeting the general corporate needs of technology and life sciences companies.
Passionate about working with developing entrepreneurs and law students, Mr. Mason has taught as an adjunct instructor at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and the University of North Carolina, School of Law. He is a member of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee of the Council for Entrepreneurial Development. He is listed, in several publications, among the best lawyers; for example, Business North Carolina’s Legal Elite, Woodward / White’s The Best Lawyers in America and North Carolina Super Lawyers (Business/Corporate). He has authored articles such as “Nobody Said There Would Be Math” and “Valuation of a Start-Up Business – Art Not Science”. Mr. Mason received BA and JD degrees from the University of North Carolina and has been admitted to Practice Law in North Carolina.
Rudy Rodriguez, Chief Scientific Officer and founder of AAD, has more than 30 years of experience in developing medical devices. Before starting AAD he served for 15 years as the vice president of research & development for Becton Dickinson (BD) Primary Care Diagnostics Division, and prior to that he worked in senior research and engineering positions at Coulter Corporation (now Beckman Coulter), Baxter Corporation, and American Instrument Company (Aminco).
Rodriguez has a reputation as an R&D pioneer. He has been involved in the development and commercialization of several products in his career that created entirely new industry segments or sold more than $1 billion each. Among them are the first automated blood cell separator at Baxter (Fenwal CS-3000), the first random access chemistry analyzer (the Coulter DACOS) and the world's most successful physician’s office hematology system at BD (the QBC). He subsequently adapted the QBC technology into the VetAutoread Hematology Analyzer, marketed by IDEXX for companion animal use. While at American Instrument, he participated in the development of the Aminco SPF and the Aminco DW-2, famed scientific instruments which enabled the biotech industry by allowing measurement of minute biochemical changes in-vitro.
Rudy holds 28 patents and is a four-time winner of the R&D 100 Award for one of the 100 most significant new technical products of the year. He is currently an adjunct professor at North Carolina State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine.
Marcuson is the former president and CEO of Embrex, a North Carolina-based biotechnology company focused on the global poultry industry. Marcuson shepherded the company from product launch through IPO to private sale to Pfizer in January 2007. Embrex had revenues of nearly $55 million in 2006 and more than 320 employees worldwide with operations in all major poultry producing countries. Its process was used for more than 90 percent of U.S. broiler production and more than 35 percent of the global industry. Prior to Embrex, Marcuson served as vice president of American Cyanamid’s international animal health business for five years and spent 10 years with Monsanto Agricultural Products Company in both domestic and international sales, marketing and product management positions.
Rosen joined the life science team at Intersouth Partners in 2005. Previously, he spent 15 years in clinical, research and financial positions in the health care and biotechnology sectors. He was awarded an Eisenhower Fellowship in 2011 by General Colin Powell. Before joining Intersouth, he worked on a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation sponsored program at the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. He was also an equity research analyst at Brean Murray & Co. for three years, covering biopharmaceuticals, genomics, generics, drug delivery and medical device companies. He has worked in clinical research roles at Duke University Medical Center’s Comprehensive Cancer Center and completed projects for the National Cancer Institute. At the beginning of his career in health care, Jimmy spent five years in Emergency Medical Services as a mountain search rescue and ambulance medic.
Dr. Shelton and his wife, Mimi, own and operate Rocky Creek Dairy & Veterinary Services near Olin, North Carolina, which combines both an operating dairy farm and a veterinary practice. Rocky Creek Dairy milks an average of 1,250 cows and raises an additional 1,600 heifers with the focus on developing cows with longevity and producing high quality milk. In addition to his dairy farm and bovine veterinary practice, Dr. Shelton is active in dairy industry and promotion organizations. He serves as president of Upper South Milk Producers and vice president of Cobblestone Cooperative based in Chatham, Virginia. He is a new director on the 2011 Dairy Policy Action Coalition (DPAC) Board and serves as chair of the affiliated Southeast Dairy Coalition.
Dr. Wheeler is a veterinarian and managing director with Novartis Venture Funds. He has held several commercial, clinical, educational and management roles in academia and the animal health industry and serves as an adjunct professor at the College of Veterinary Medicine at North Carolina State University. His veterinary specialty is neurology, having been awarded a PhD by the University of London and subsequently gaining the Diploma of the European College of Veterinary Neurology, of which he is a past-president. He has been a practicing veterinarian and authored several textbooks and more than 115 articles. He has also lectured throughout the world on veterinary neurology and neurosurgery. In academia, he has held faculty positions at the Royal Veterinary College at the University of London and North Carolina State University. He has been in the veterinary pharmaceutical industry for the last 12 years, currently working with the Novartis Venture Fund where he is responsible for identifying and evaluating investment opportunities related to animal health.
Dr. Slenning has a Bachelor's degree in animal science, graduates degrees in agricultural economics and in epidemiology, as well as a DVM, all from the University of California, Davis. That was followed by eight years of private practice in the southern San Joaquin valley—the heart of California’s dairy industry - where he and his partner provide production medicine services to approximately 40,000 dairy cows.
He joined NC State College of Veterinary Medicine in late 1989 where he teaches all four years of veterinary students, undergraduate Animal Science students, and graduate students. He has been the coordinator of the Population Medicine Graduate Program and is currently the head of the Animal Biosecurity Risk Management Group, in the Department of Population Health & Pathobiology. Dr Slenning was also the Associate Editor for the Elsevier journal for Preventive Veterinary Medicine (the flagship journal for veterinary epidemiology and quantitative research) for five years.
Since 2001, Dr. Slenning's focus has been on agricultural disasters with emphases on catastrophic foreign animal disease prevention, detection, and response. He helped form the four-university collaborative 501©(3) organization, the Agriculture Disaster Research Institute, and is currently its Executive Director. He is on several state and regional work groups aiming to improve the resilience of agriculture to disasters of natural, accidental, or intentional origin.
Dr. Slenning has authored 20 peer-reviewed research articles and 87 review/technology transfer papers and presentations on clinical decision theory, economics, epidemiology, agricultural disasters, and foreign animal diseases; 5 book chapters on epidemiology, production medicine, and clinical investigation; a manual for quantifying dairy management quality; and 30 copyrighted spreadsheet applications in all the above areas.