Board of Directors

Gary Pace

CEO at Cell Microsystems

Dr. Pace has been CEO at Cell Microsystems since 2014 and led the reboot of the Company to focus on product applications and automated instrumentation. He has over 30 years of experience in the life science field, with 20 years of legal and corporate experience and 12 years in biotech research for large and small companies. Dr. Pace is a registered patent attorney with a record of over 40 issued US patents. Since 2001 he has helped many early and development stage companies in the life sciences with their strategic, intellectual property, and transactional activities. Dr. Pace has held executive management positions in several companies, including Novartis Corporation, Gentris Corporation, Quill Medical, Inc., and BASF Corporation. Dr. Pace holds a J.D. degree from the School of Law at North Carolina Central University and his Ph.D. from North Carolina State University.

Deval A Lashkari

Senior Partner at Telegraph Hill Partners

Dr. Lashkari, a co-founder of THP, has worked in the life sciences area developing and commercializing novel technologies for over 25 years. He gained experience as an entrepreneur and through senior management positions in a number of life science companies. He was a founding Research Director at Synteni, which was acquired by Incyte Genomics, where he became Director of Product Development. He also worked with Operon Technologies (acquired by Qiagen), leading product development and commercial strategies. Deval has represented THP on the boards of AcroMetrix (acquired by Life Technologies), Agena Bioscience (acquired by Mesa Laboratories), Akoya Biosciences (NASDAQ:AKYA), Althea Technologies (acquired by Ajinomoto), Applied Precision (acquired by GE), Argonaut Manufacturing Services, Aurora Discovery (acquired by NEXUS Biosystems), Asuragen (acquired by Bio-Techne), Cell Microsystems, Community Bio, Dynex, NEXUS Biosystems (acquired by Brooks Automation), Nimble Therapeutics, Precision NanoSystems (acquired by Danaher), RareCyte, Sage Labs (acquired by Horizon Discovery), and SwitchGear Genomics (acquired by Active Motif). He has been an observer on the boards of Dharmacon (acquired by Fisher Scientific) and Carterra. Dr. Lashkari received a BA with highest honors from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. from Stanford University and currently serves on the Stanford Medical School Alumni Board of Governors.

Rob J Capone

Venture Partner at Telegraph Hill Partners

Before joining THP, Rob worked as a Partner at Trinity Life Sciences, a consultancy focused on evidence-based clinical and commercial development strategy across therapeutics, diagnostics, and medical technology sectors. Rob worked as a strategy consultant for a total of 10 years, partnering with emerging biotechnology & medical technology companies as well as large, global organizations to inform key decisions on clinical development, launch strategy, market development, brand lifecycle strategy, and promotional campaign development. Prior to working as a strategy consultant, Rob worked at Telegraph Hill Partners for four years as an Associate, working on market analysis, transaction execution, and portfolio company initiatives. Rob worked as an Associate at Telegraph Hill Partners, an analyst at Seven Hill Partners, a boutique investment banking firm focused on life sciences and technology verticals. Rob represents THP on the boards of Cell Microsystems and Emerging Therapy Solutions. Rob holds a BBA in Finance from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA with honors from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

Alexander C. Herzick

Partner at Telegraph Hill Partners

Before joining THP in 2009, Alex worked in Business Development in the Oncology/Multiple Sclerosis Group at Genzyme Corporation. At Genzyme, he structured licensing and M&A transactions in the biotechnology and pharmaceuticals space. He also worked as a Portfolio Manager at BlueMountain Capital Management and as an Analyst in Investment Banking at Bank of America Securities. In 2021, he moved to North Carolina from San Francisco to open THP’s Research Triangle office. He has represented THP on the boards of Argonaut Manufacturing Services, Carterra, Cell Microsystems, Community Bio, Dynex Technologies and Teknova (NASDAQ:TKNO). He was a board observer at Agena Bioscience (acquired by Mesa Laboratories).Alex holds an MBA with honors from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a Bachelor of Science in Economics with a Minor in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Duke University.

Brett Williams

President and CEO at Verogen Corporation

Brett is the President and CEO at Verogen Corporation, a sequencing company advancing next-generation sequencing to help unlock the true potential of forensic genomics. He is a scientist by training, earning his Master of Science is Cytogenetics and Molecular Biology from Queensland University of Technology and an MBA from the Warwick Business School. He worked at Applied Biosystems, Invitrogen, Life Tech, Thermo, and as CEO at private equity-run portfolio companies.

Chris Sims

Founder and Board of Directors at Cell Microsystems, President at Altis Biosystems, Inc., Professor at University of Washington

Dr. Sims is a Professor at the University of Washington with joint appointments in the departments of Bioengineering and Medicine. He founded Cell Biosciences (now Protein Simple) along with his colleague, Dr. Allbritton in 2002. Drs. Sims, Allbritton and Wang were also founders of Intellego Corporation which became a subsidiary of Amkor Technology and Altis Biosystems. Dr. Sims earned his M.D. degree from Johns Hopkins University followed by a medicine residency at Harvard and fellowships at Stanford.