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Donald A. Holzworth, MS –
Don Holzworth, Chairman of the Health Decisions Board of Directors, is the former Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Constella Group, a leading global provider of clinical development, public health policy and implementation services operating in more than 60 countries. The company was sold to SRA International in 2007. Mr. Holzworth was also the founder and served as chairman of the board of Expression Analysis, Inc., a genomic services company spun out of Duke University Medical Center and sold to Quintiles in 2012.
Mr. Holzworth currently fulfills the role of Executive Chairman for Bivarus, Inc. a patient centered analytics company co-founded by a UNC and Duke physician. He is Executive in Residence at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Gillings School of Global Public Health, as well as Chairman of the School's Advisory Council, and an Adjunct Professor of Health Policy and Management. In 2011, he co-founded and now serves on the board of Veritas Collaborative, a specialty behavioral hospital system serving adolescents and adults with severe eating disorders. In addition, Mr. Holzworth serves as an entrepreneur in residence for the Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network, as an advisory board member for the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute for Private Enterprise, and as an advisor to Southern Capitol Ventures and Bull City Venture Partners.
Since 2006, Mr. Holzworth has served as a member of the Board of the Accordia Global Health Foundation, which is creating a network of Centers of Excellence to drive health innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa. He is also the founder of Giving Positively, a non-profit organization providing vocational scholarships to HIV-positive young adults in Kampala, Uganda.
In 2003 and again in 2007, Mr. Holzworth was recognized by the North Carolina Council for Entrepreneurial Development with its Entrepreneurial Excellence Award. In 2005, Ernst & Young named him as a Carolinas Entrepreneur of the Year®. He subsequently served as both a regional and national judge for this prestigious program. Mr. Holzworth's public health experience led to a 2008 appointment to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.
Mr. Holzworth holds a BS and MS in Computer Science and Environmental Science from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He also completed advanced graduate studies in statistics at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Mark Eisenach
Mark Eisenach is founder and Managing Director of Ridgeview Partners LLC, a Princeton, N.J.-based corporate advisory firm. Mr. Eisenach has more than 20 years of corporate development, strategy, and executive management experience, primarily in the life sciences and high technology industries. His knowledge of the pharmaceutical outsourcing industry is particularly extensive.
Mr. Eisenach served as CEO of pharmaceutical services company Acurian Inc. from October 2001 until May 2005. His experience also includes holding a variety of senior executive positions at Covance Inc., where he led worldwide business strategy, mergers and acquisitions, business partnerships and global marketing efforts and served on Covance's Global Leadership Council. In 1999, Mr. Eisenach founded Nexigent Inc., an e-business subsidiary of Covance Inc. for the development of technology-enabled clinical trial services, and served as its Chief Operating Officer.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Eisenach spent eight years at The Boston Consulting Group, serving as Executive Officer and advising many pharmaceutical companies. His experience also includes serving as a tax economist at Price Waterhouse. Mr. Eisenach currently serves as Director of Molecular Imaging, Inc. In addition to serving in executive and consulting positions, Mr. Eisenach holds Series 82 and Series 63 security licenses with Walter Greenblatt & Associates, Ridgeview Partners' investment banking partner.
Mr. Eisenrach received his AB from Harvard College.
Paula Brown Stafford, MPH
Paula Brown Stafford is a consultant and biopharmaceutical services executive with more than 30 years of industry experience. She retired in 2015 from her position as President of Clinical Development at Quintiles Transnational to found her own consultancy. Ms. Stafford's global responsibilities while at Quintiles encompassed Phase I-IV clinical research services, including Medical and Project Management; Site, Data and Safety Monitoring; Laboratory Services; and Functional Resourcing.
Since 1985, Ms. Stafford has held numerous positions of increasing responsibility in Project Management in the United States and Europe, as well as positions in Business Development, Scientific Operations, General Management and Executive Management. She served as a member of the Quintiles Executive Committee for more than five years. She was an Independent Director for BioImaging, later BioClinica (NASDAQ: BIOC), from 2002 to 2008. In addition, Ms. Stafford served as a member of the CDISC (Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium) Board of Directors for 9 years, served as Chair for 2 years and as a member of the Executive Committee for 6 years.
Ms. Stafford is a member and Chair of the Public Health Foundation Board at UNC-Chapel Hill, and sits on the Healthcare Businesswomen's Association (HBA) Advisory Board. In 2011, Ms. Stafford received the Triangle Business Journal's Women in Business Award. FierceBiotech named Ms. Stafford one of the 10 top women in biotech in 2012.
Ms. Stafford holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Public Health in Biostatistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2016, the university honored Ms. Stafford with its Distinguished Alumna Award.
Stephen DeCherney, MD, MPH
Stephen DeCherney, MD, MPH, Senior Medical Advisor at Health Decisions, is a former CEO of Health Decisions and an active member of the Board of Directors. Dr. DeCherney is a respected endocrinologist, pharmaceutical industry leader, clinical development executive and clinical scientist. He provides medical guidance and protocol commentary as necessary on active and planned Health Decisions clinical trials. Dr. DeCherney is committed to improving the efficiency of clinical development through concepts such as replacing phase 3 trials with a novel phase 2c approach.
For more than 30 years, Dr. DeCherney has led quality improvement initiatives based on statistical process control in both healthcare delivery and research processes. He often provides strategic advice to Health Decisions' clients and private equity firms, drawing on extensive experience in medical research at multiple levels. Dr. DeCherney has managed clinical research staff in 53 countries; provided executive oversight on numerous clinical studies in a wide range of indications; served as Principal Investigator for over 100 clinical trials during 11 years in the Christiana Care Health System in Wilmington, Delaware; and served for five years as a Guest Researcher at the National Institute of Diabetes, and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health (NIH). He was formerly a senior executive at Quintiles Global Transnational and PRA International.
Dr. DeCherney's current activities in clinical research include:
Reviewing protocols, study designs and operational plans for clinical trials conducted by Health Decisions;
Reviewing clinical research protocols and study design as a member of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Institutional Review Board;
Serving as Trustee, William Harvey Research Institute, of Queen Mary Medical College, London, St Barts and The London Hospitals, London, England;
Serving as Chair, University of Delaware Research Foundation;
Serving as Trustee, Christiana Care Health System, Delaware.
Board-certified in internal medicine and endocrinology/diabetes, Dr. DeCherney is Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also Professor (Adjunct) in the Kenan-Flagler School of Business at the University of North Carolina, where he teaches a course in pharmaceutical economics. Earlier in his career, Dr. DeCherney served as an associate professor at both the University of Delaware and Thomas Jefferson University.
Dr. DeCherney received his medical degree from Temple University in Philadelphia and an MPH, Healthcare Management, from Columbia University School of Public Health. He completed his residency at the Graduate Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and performed his endocrinology training at Vanderbilt University. Dr. DeCherney is a graduate of Columbia College, Columbia University in New York City, from which he received a BA in Molecular Biology. Dr. DeCherney has served as director of a variety of organizations and corporations in the United States and the United Kingdom, including the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, North Carolina.
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