LIFE SCIENCE PARTNER - Key Persons
Before starting Life Science Partner in 2002, Tom was a Partner in the emerging Health Technologies practice at Korn/Ferry International. Previously, he joined the executive search industry at Russell Reynolds, where he earned a reputation for quickly understanding the commercialization of new medical technologies and successfully recruiting top scientists and business leaders to speed up healthcare products to improve patient care.
Interested in supporting entrepreneurs needing capital, Tom co-founded two venture capital firms - Georgia Venture Partners, a state-wide fund focused on university innovation, and the international firm HealthQuest Capital, where he served as a venture partner. Both investment groups target growth-stage medical devices, diagnostics, healthcare IT, and consumer healthcare companies. Each firm embodies Tom's belief that medical innovation must be nurtured to provide benefits that can be quantified regarding improvements in patient outcomes and healthcare economics.
Before his career in executive placement, Tom served as Director of Commercial Development for SyStemix, where he established technology developmental partnerships with major cancer centers, including M.D. Anderson, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and the Mayo Clinic. SyStemix developed proprietary stem cell purifying technologies to be reprogrammed to treat cancer and genetic illnesses. He was the liaison with Sandoz's oncology group, whose parent company completed its acquisition of the company in 1996.
Tom began his biotechnology career at Roche Biomedical and Roche Molecular Systems, developing and executing a global marketing plan for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) diagnostics technology, now a foundational technology for viral detection (COVID-19) and companion diagnostics speeding the development of targeted cancer therapeutics. In partnership with Duke University Medical Center, Tom conceived and organized the first international conference on the clinical applications of PCR for HIV detection.
Tom earned his MD at Vanderbilt University and his undergraduate degree and MBA at Duke University. Active in the Southeast community, he has participated on the boards of Georgia Bio (past chairman), the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at Georgia Tech, and Southeast BIO. He helped found the Southeast Medical Device Association and merged the organization with Southeast BIO to form the new Southeast Life Sciences Association.
Tom's interests include kiteboarding, tennis, international travel, Duke basketball, and discussing big ideas in healthcare & technology. His grown daughters live in San Francisco and Boston, with his eldest following him into healthcare as the VP of Growth Partnerships at Oak Street Health, now a division of CVS Healthcare.