When you have a pan-Canadian mission, pan-Canadian leadership is everything.

Gordon McCauley, BA, MBA, ICD.D was appointed President and CEO of adMare BioInnovations in 2016 after serving on the Board for four years. Mr. McCauley is an accomplished life science investor and executive.

He has served as President and CEO of Viable Healthworks Corp., a national healthcare service business; Allon Therapeutics Inc., a neuroscience biotechnology company that developed novel therapeutics from pre-clinical to global phase 3 studies before being sold; and as Co-Founder and Partner of NDI Capital, an institutionally backed life-science investment fund. Mr. McCauley has also been a senior executive of several successful healthcare enterprises, and a senior advisor to several prominent Canadian political leaders.

Mr. McCauley has served as a Director of a number of private and publicly traded companies. Currently, he is a Director of adMare (and a number of its portfolio and subsidiary companies), and Chairs the Board of both BIOTECanada, Canada’s national biotechnology industry organization, and CGEn, Canada’s national genomics enterprise, and is a Director of Montréal InVivo. Mr. McCauley has previously served as Chair of Life Sciences British Columbia, Acetech, The Toronto Rehab Foundation, and was a founding Director of the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. In 2008, Mr. McCauley was the first Canadian appointed to the Board of The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) in Washington D.C., where he served in leadership positions until 2013.

Gordon earned a BA in Political Science from McMaster University, an MBA (with Honours) from IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland, and holds the ICD.D certification from the Institute of Corporate Directors and the Rotman School of Business at the University of Toronto.

As Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Youssef Bennani is taking overall responsibility for the scientific direction of the organization and assisting Venture Partners and the Program Development and Partnership teams focus their efforts around areas of interest.

Dr. Youssef Bennani is currently Chairman of the Board of Domain Therapeutics (France & Canada), and is an independent Board member of Bellus Health (TSX:BLU). He has over 25 years experience in pharmaceutical R&D leadership and management serving most recently as Site Head and Vice President of R&D at Vertex Pharmaceuticals Canada Inc. Prior to this position, Dr. Bennani spent several years as Vice President Drug Innovation at Vertex’s Headquarters (Boston – MA). He has also held various positions of increasing responsibility in pharmaceutical R&D at Ligand Pharmaceuticals, Abbott Laboratories (now Abbvie) and Athersys. His experience spans multiple therapeutic areas including oncology, neurology, infection, inflammation and renal diseases.

Dr. Bennani has studied in chemistry (PhD, Université de Montréal), business (MBA, LFGSM – Chicago) and corporate governance (ICD.D, McGill-Rotman Schools of Business).

As Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Matthew Carlyle is taking responsibility for the overall leadership of the business functions including finance & accounting, legal, scale-up functions including the innovation centre and capital, operations, IT, and project management.

Mr. Carlyle brings extensive experience and relationships across global biotechnology and venture capital to adMare, having been a partner of a national venture capital firm, CFO of a publicly-traded biotech, and CFO of a number of private life sciences companies. Most recently, Mr. Carlyle was the Chief Financial Officer of Viable Healthworks Corp., and from 2004 to 2013, was Chief Financial Officer of Allon Therapeutics Inc. Previously, he served in Corporate Finance and Development roles for a number of public and private life science and technology companies and has been involved in raising approximately $200M. Mr. Carlyle is a founding Partner of NDI Capital, a private investment management company focused on investing in high potential life science and healthcare companies.

He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation and is a member of the Association for Investment Management and Research and the Vancouver Society of Financial Analysts.

Dr. Lana Janes is a biopharmaceutical industry veteran with over 20 years of pharmaceutical development experience that spans the full life cycle of therapeutic product development.

As Venture Partner, Dr. Lana Janes is working with adMare leadership to identify specific areas of strategic commercial opportunity, and then in partnership with other stakeholders, drive the building of a new company of scale that can develop those opportunities, and grow into a strong new anchor for Canada’s life science sector.

Most recently, Lana worked at QLT Inc. in Vancouver (now Novelion Therapeutics Inc.), where she held positions of increasing responsibility, and was a member of the executive management team for over 10 years. She most recently served as Senior Vice President, Intellectual Property and Technology Development and Chief Patent Officer, with leadership and oversight responsibilities for all R&D aspects of Novelion’s late stage ophthalmology orphan assets. Lana also has extensive experience in negotiating licensing, co-development, merger, acquisition, divestiture, and joint development transactions, and has conducted and lead extensive clinical diligence investigations into numerous technologies, devices and companies in the biotech/medical device space spanning numerous therapeutic areas.

Prior to joining QLT, Dr. Janes worked for several years as a registered patent agent (Canada and the US) in the Toronto offices of Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP, and Ogilvy Renault LLP (now Norton Rose Fulbright), and has also served as an in-house patent agent at F. Hoffmann-La Roche in Basel, Switzerland, where her practice focused on the strategic development and protection of IP portfolios in the fields of pharmaceutical and biological products.

Lana also currently acts as Chief Operating Officer for the Seattle based biotech company, Retinagenix LLC, a privately held, clinical stage company committed to the development and commercialization of small molecule synthetic chromophore technologies discovered at the University of Washington for the treatment of progressive retinal diseases, and sits on the Boards of Directors for several entrepreneurial start-up biotechs in Vancouver, providing her with valuable experience and insight in strategically and cost-effectively advancing pre-IND stage and semi-virtual companies.

Lana received her AB in Chemistry with honours from Harvard University and her Ph.D. in organic chemistry with honours from McGill University, where she also conducted post-Doctoral work in the field of biological organic chemistry. She is an author of numerous scientific publications in the field of organic and medical chemistry and worked for several years as a synthetic organic chemist in the chemical and food industries in the US and UK.

As Vice President, Program Development and Partnerships, Dr. Azzi is leading adMare’s project identification and scientific and commercial evaluation process, ensuring a robust and strategically diverse pipeline for the organization.

With deep experience in corporate and business development, Dr. Azzi is working closely with adMare’s Venture Partners to build their portfolios through new program creation, asset identification and investment area development. In doing so, she is playing a key role in advancing adMare’s Mission to source therapeutically and commercially promising research from leading academic and biotech partners from across Canada to create and grow companies of scale.

Most recently Dr. Azzi was the Executive Global Vice President, Corporate Development (and previously Chief Business Officer) at Nexelis. Prior to Nexelis, Dr. Azzi was Director, Scientific Affairs at the NEOMED Institute, responsible for the identification and evaluation of new opportunities to complement NEOMED’s prospecting activities. Previously, she was Director of Programs at CQDM, where she was responsible for the evaluation and management of research projects and funding programs. She was also actively involved in business development activities with industry partners. She started her career as leader of the cellular biology group at Bellus Health (formerly Neurochem Inc.), where she was involved in the development of therapeutics targeting Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes.

Dr. Azzi holds a PhD in Neuroscience from Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) in Paris.

Dr. Dave Rogers joined adMare (previously known as CDRD) as its Intellectual Property Director in January, 2011.

He has been involved in biotech patent law, particularly US patent law, since completion of his graduate research work.  In 2000, he joined the San Francisco law firm of Flehr, Hohbach, Test, Albritton & Herbert LLP, which was later acquired by Dorsey and Whitney LLP. While working in San Francisco for Dorsey, he qualified as a patent agent before the US Patent and Trademark Office. In 2005, Dr. Rogers relocated to Dorsey’s Vancouver office, continuing to work closely with the San Francisco and Palo Alto offices to advise US and Canadian biotech clients on patent matters.

He has a background in biochemistry, chemistry, immunology, and neurobiology, and his IP experience includes patent drafting, patent prosecution, portfolio evaluation and development, patent analysis and opinion work (freedom to operate, invalidity, and non-infringement) and IP due diligence for licensing and financing.

Dr. Rogers received a PhD from the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University, and a JD from the University of British Columbia.

As Managing Partner, Investments, Frédéric is leading adMare’s investments and portfolio companies and brings more than 20 years experience in life sciences investment management.

He has extensive health sciences venture capital expertise through his prior involvement with Desjardins Venture Capital and CDP Capital – Technology Venture (Sofinov) where he was involved in both biopharmaceutical and medical device deals. At Sofinov, he was involved in investments such as NuVasive, Inhibitex, IntraLuminal Therapeutics, Acurian, and TransMedics. While at Desjardins, he showed significant leadership in the creation and management of a profitable early-stage health sciences investment portfolio that included, amongst others, BioAxone Therapeutics, Enobia Pharma, and Tranzyme.

In recent years, Frédéric was involved in project-based investments, as well as developing licensing and spin-off opportunities at MSBi Valorisation (now Aligo Innovation). He has served on the board of directors of many health sciences companies and has been involved on organizing committees of conferences such as MedTech North and AdvaMed.

Frédéric holds an MBA in Finance and International Management from HEC Montréal, a MSc in organic chemistry and a PhD in polymer physical chemistry, both from Université de Montréal.

As Senior Director, Communications & External Affairs, Mr. Gee brings more than 15 years of experience in public, media, government and stakeholder relations; communications and marketing; project management; and not-for-profit operations.

Prior to joining adMare, he spent 10 years as the Senior Director of Operations and Communications at LifeSciences BC, the not-for-profit industry association responsible for representing the province’s life sciences community, and for building the local, national and international partnerships it requires to flourish.

Mr. Gee began his career as a Communications Officer with the Canadian Forest Research Centre in Victoria. He subsequently joined the Science Council of British Columbia (now BCIC) administering their various funding programs for researchers and technology start-ups. He has participated on numerous advisory committees including the Executive Committee of the High Tech Communicators’ Exchange, the BIO International Steering Committee, and as a Founding Member of the Global Bioscience Partnership.

Mr. Gee completed a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Creative Writing at the University of Victoria, and he is also a graduate of the Leadership Vancouver Program, and From Lab to Leadership – Developing Scientific and Corporate Leaders. He has also been a Guest Lecturer with the University of British Columbia’s Career Services; Industry Mentor for the Student Biotechnology Network.

As Chief of Staff Ms Lonergan works closely with and supports the President and CEO in an execution capacity. Key responsibilities include supporting corporate development initiatives, strategic and organizational planning efforts, as well as developing and implementing an organizational evaluation strategy including corporate metrics/KPIs.

Kristy has 10+ years of experience in the commercialization of life sciences technologies with a demonstrated track record of success in a variety of roles across business development, strategic marketing, and product management. She is adept at conducting competitive analyses and developing business cases that enable data-driven decisions to support strategic direction, investments, partnerships, and product development opportunities, and has made significant contributions to the like at both CDRD and adMare. Prior to CDRD she held positions of increasing responsibility at STEMCELL Technologies, most recently managing a team of product marketing managers with accountabilities covering the company’s portfolio of cell culture products targeting academic, cell therapy, and drug discovery markets.

Kristy Lonergan holds a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Victoria, an MSc from McGill University in Neuroscience, and a Graduate Diploma in Business Administration from Simon Fraser University.