Advisory Board

Alan E. Sokolow, MD

Dr. Sokolow has a unique career in healthcare, having been involved early in the development of healthcare informatics, and program development in demand and care management. His areas of expertise include value-based reimbursement, medical policy, medical management, high risk and condition management programs, provider relations and program implementation.

With Oxford,  Dr. Sokolow was instrumental in the development of ETG based analyses of health care costs, as well as the pioneering design of case based contracting. At Empire Alan was responsible for refining transactional systems alerts, which led to systematic improvement in quality care. He has repeatedly lead teams in various engagements, which implemented high risk case management programs based on predictive models, resulting in significant cost savings and reduction in hospitalization. He is an expert in medical cost management.

Dr. Sokolow graduated from Pomona College and UCLA School of Medicine. He trained in Internal Medicine at the University of Utah, and at the University of Rochester. Board certified in Internal Medicine.

Vita Cassese

Vita Cassese has over 30 years of operations experience at Pfizer Inc, a $51 billion Fortune 30 company and focuses on investments in the healthcare and technology sectors. Most recently, she held the position of Vice President, Business Development, Strategy and Innovation. She previously served as CIO for Worldwide Pharmaceuticals, leading an organization of nearly 1,000 people in 44 countries and was a member of the Worldwide Pharmaceuticals Leadership Team which was responsible for long term business strategy. Vita has established industry-leading partnerships with Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, Intel, and IBM. She was a key member of the Warner Lambert and Pharmacia acquisitions’ due diligence and integration teams. Previously, she served as Vice President of Business Technology and Market Research for the US Pharmaceuticals Group. In this role, she led many technology initiatives, one of which was honored with Management Science’s prestigious Prism Award.

Vita is a member of the Board of Trustees of the College of Mount St. Vincent. She is a guest lecturer at New York University’s Stern School of Business, MIT Sloan, and Boston University, and is a mentor at Columbia University. Vita holds a BA in Mathematics from the College of Mount Saint Vincent and an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Michael B. Packard

Michael Packard is a proven executive with an extraordinary range of experiences in technical and non-technical environments, manufacturing and retail, large organizations and start-ups. His professional background includes leadership positions and responsibilities for consumer and industrial products manufacturing, marketing, merchandising, buying, distribution, facilities construction & maintenance, legal, government relations, human resources, information systems, store operations, and business unit leadership. Michael has led the development of start-up business units in retail concepts, technical products and equipment manufacturing, and managed vision care.

Michael received his bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Bucknell Univerisity and his MBA from the University of Virginia. Since 1999, he has managed his own consulting firm, TransCat Consulting, helping organizations “make change that matters.”

Benjamin Rooks

Ben Rooks is the founder of ST Advisors, LLC, a consultancy which works with healthcare companies and their sponsors typically on issues around strategy, financing and outcomes/exit planning.  He spent six years as an investment banker where he closed over 25 healthcare and medical technology transactions valued from $40 to $365 million. Previously he spent close to a decade as a sell-side equity research analyst where he covered over 25 healthcare information stocks in addition to e-health, drug information and pharmacy benefit management. He has been a judge for the MS-HUG Industry Solution Awards since its inception and was a Zacks All-Star Analyst.

Ben earned his MBA in healthcare management from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and his BA in psychology from Brandeis University.

Esther Dyson

Esther Dyson is actively involved in improving the world’s health, both as an investor and as the publisher on the Internet of her own genome and health records, as part of George Church’s Personal Genome Project. She believes fiercely in the power of information to affect people’s behavior and to improve the quality of health care. She brings to her work insights from economics, information technology, management practice and practical psychology.

As an investor, she was an early investor in and board member of Medscape, now part of WebMD. She was also an investor in Medstory, now part of Microsoft. Currently, she is an investor in and sits on the board of 23andMe. She is also an investor in Contagion Health, HealthEngage, HealthTap, HealthVillage, Keas, Medicalgorithmics, Organized Wisdom, PatientsLikeMe, PatientsKnowBest, Resilient, Tocagen and Voxiva (creator of Text4baby). She has written two monographs on electronic records and health information liquidity, and ran the 2005 Personal Health Information workshop co-sponsored by New York’s New School University.

Dave Stack

Dave Stack is Currently the President, CEO and Director of Pacira Pharmaceuticals, Inc. He is also the Founding Partner of Stack Pharmaceuticals, Inc. a commercialization, marketing and strategy firm serving emerging healthcare companies and a Managing Director at MPM Capital. From September 2001 until August 2004 he was President, Chief Executive Officer and Director of The Medicines Company (NASDAQ:MDCO). Prior to The Medicines Company he was the CEO of Stack Pharmaceutical, Inc where MDCO was one of the primary customers. From May 1995 to December 1999, he served as the President and General Manager of Innovex, Inc. responsible for the Americas. Innovex Inc. was a commercial solutions company offering a full range of marketing, sales and clinical development capabilities to pharmaceutical and biotechnology customers. From April 1993 to May 1995 he was the Vice President of Business Development and Marketing for Immunomedics, Inc (NASDAQ:IMMU) a biopharmaceutical company focusing on monoclonal antibodies in infectious disease and oncology. From May 1992 to March 1993, he was the Director of Business Development and Planning for Infectious Disease, Oncology and Virology for Roche Labs where he was the Therapeutic World Leader of Infectious Disease. Prior to that he held various positions with Roche Labs for approximately 12 years and was a retail and hospital pharmacist for three years after graduating from Albany College of Pharmacy, he also holds a BS in Biology from Siena College.

Dave was recognized as the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2003 (New Jersey Healthcare). He is a Director of Molecular Insight Pharmaceuticals, Inc NASDAQ:MIPI), and PepTx, Inc.