President

David E. Williams is President of the Health Business Group, a consulting firm that helps technology-enabled healthcare, medical device and pharmaceutical companies develop and execute innovative business strategies. He leads consulting teams, advises CEOs, is a member of corporate and non-profit boards, and chairs review panels for the federal government. He co-founded the company in 2003 after more than a decade as a consultant for the Boston Consulting Group and The LEK Partnership.

David has a rare ability to explain complex health care concepts simply and clearly, making him a sought after expert for media such as NPR, Business Week, Investor’s Business Daily, Reader’s Digest, US News and The Boston Globe. David produces the popular Health Business Blog and HealthBiz Podcast, where he has written more than 3500 posts since 2005 and conducted more than 100 podcast interviews with entrepreneurs, executives, scientists and political leaders.

He is a board member of Clerio Vision (a global medical laser device company) and advisor to Health Care Originals (respiratory wearables and remote monitoring), and Credo (medical record retrieval). He is a former board member of Home Care Delivered (acquired by BPOC), Medullan (acquired by ZS), iCardiac Technologies (acquired by ERT), Candescent Healing (acquired by Restorix), Vericred (exited board at Series B), and Advanced Practice Strategies (acquired by Relias).  

David has chaired and been a member of a variety of review panels for the Department of Health and Human Services as part of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s Regional Extension Center (REC) program, which reviewed applications under the ARRA/HITECH Act. He also served on ONC review panels for the Beacon Community Cooperative Agreement Program and State Health Information Exchange Challenge Program and later chaired a panel to conduct a biennial review of the RECs and chaired a review panel for the Exchange Navigators under the Affordable Care Act.

David holds a BA in Economics from Wesleyan University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and an MBA from Harvard Business School, with First Year Honors. 

Location: Boston, MA

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Karen Donovan has held several senior strategic and operating roles at healthcare services, healthcare software, and consulting firms.  She began her career more than 20 years ago at The LEK Partnership, where she led strategic development projects, M&A screenings, and competitive benchmarking for managed care, healthcare services, medical technology, and diagnostics clients.  As Director of Strategic Development at VITAS Healthcare, she helped develop clinical, financial, and operating software systems and best practices for operations in 31 cities, spanning home health, long-term care, and hospital care settings.  In addition, she led the development of a contract services subsidiary to provide these systems and services to outside companies.  As VP of Operations at CareTools, an enterprise-wide healthcare software company, Karen oversaw customer sales and systems implementations for customer segments that included disease management companies, physician practice management, and MSO companies.

As an independent consultant, she provided strategic expertise to investment, healthcare services, healthcare IT, and pharmaceutical clients.  At Health Business Group she has performed numerous market assessments and M&A evaluations in healthcare technology, services, and payer markets. She has extensive experience in strategic planning and sustainability assignments with non-profit and multi-stakeholder organizations.

Karen has a BS in Economics from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was on the Dean’s List.  She is an active angel investor, advisor, and mentor in early-stage healthcare companies.

Location: Boston, MA

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Most recently, Mr. Malak was Chief Executive Officer of Zahav Bioscience, a clinical stage oncology company established by a large family office to develop Cytimmune Sciences’ therapeutics assets. He previously served as CEO and Chairman of Cytimmune Sciences; a novel oncology platform company he helped turned around after assuming leadership from its founder/CEO.

Mr. Malak started his career in management and strategy consulting, serving as Principal of the Boston Consulting Group where he advised pharmaceutical, healthcare, telecom, and technology clients. He subsequently served as Managing Director at Putnam Investments where he invested in the largest global technology companies. His roles at Putnam included analyst, technology team leader, and technology portfolio manager.

Mr. Malak has broad experience as an angel investor in early-stage healthcare companies, with two successful exits to date. He was previously a Director of Advanced Practice Strategies, a SaaS medical risk and human capital management (HCM) company sold to Relias Learning (subsidiary of Bertelsmann). In digital health, he was an investor in Wellframe, which was sold to Healthedge (Blackstone). He has also made investments in medical technology and synthetic biology companies.

He received a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, summa cum laude, from Tufts University where he was elected and was President of Tau Beta Pi. He was also awarded an MSE in Systems Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

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Trevor McCaw is an experienced consultant, entrepreneur and Fortune 500 manager, with substantial expertise in healthcare services, information technology and medical devices. Before joining Health Business Group, Trevor worked in Minneapolis for Medtronic’s Patient Management Group where he focused on the planning and launch of CareLink, Medtronic’s industry-leading remote patient monitoring technology. He was responsible for adding a new class of devices to CareLink, which included establishing overall strategic/product planning objectives, working with the FDA on 510k approval, interfacing with CMS to establish reimbursement, training the salesforce, preparing market launch material and creating a customer support infrastructure. Trevor was named one of only 30 “Emerging Leaders” within the company by Medtronic’s executive management.

Prior to Medtronic Trevor worked as a consultant for the Boston Consulting Group and Innosight. As an entrepreneur, Trevor founded Sentinel Medical Technologies, a healthcare technology commercialization company, and co-founded an enterprise software company that went public in 2001 on the AIM stock exchange.

Trevor received a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering from Queen’s University in Canada and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Location: San Francisco, CA

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Jerome Meier has had a number of senior strategic and operating roles in international business. He began his career with Dupont as a Process & Product Development Engineer supporting a new Composites Development Center in Europe. After business school, Jerome joined The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) as part of the start-up team in its office in Mexico and then moved to Sao Paulo to be part of the start-up team for BCG’s office in Brazil. Working throughout Latin America, Jerome focused on chemical and industrial products businesses and diverse financial services.

While a Principal at Partners in Performance, an operations improvement consulting firm, Jerome led engagements at large natural resource companies in North and South America and Australia to improve operating performance – focusing on growing throughput and cash flow.

Jerome also founded and grew an internet service to source rental equipment throughout North America, reaching a customer base of over 2,000 customers. Afterwards, he was Vice President, Global Business Develop and Strategy at Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Technologies. More recently, he has served as Chief Operating Office of Akeso Biomedical, a microbiome company focused on livestock animals. He has also consulted to companies focused on metabolic engineering and fermentation, antibiotic development and bioprocessing.

Jerome has BS and MS degrees from MIT in chemical engineering and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Jerome is fluent in French, Spanish and Portuguese and has a working knowledge of German.

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He serves on the Board of Directors of Baymatob (a women-founded and led medical technology company focused on maternal and fetal health), Cavalon Therapeutics (a biotechnology company focused on drug/device combination products for Parkinson’s disease) and The Health Trust (a nonprofit operating foundation focused on health equity and access). He also serves on the Advisory Boards of HealthRhythms (a digital therapeutics company focused on mental health) and Paradromics (a medical technology company focused on Brain Computer Interface products).  

David has co-founded and held executive roles at several successful life sciences companies, including Proteus Digital Health, Catalyst Biosciences, Iconix Biosciences, ARIAD Pharmaceuticals and L.E.K. Consulting.  David is an inventor on over a dozen issued and pending patents related to digital technologies and their application to drug discovery, therapeutic products and health care monitoring.  He earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he graduated with Distinction, and a BA from Wesleyan University, where he was named the Gilbert H. Clee Scholar.

Location: San Francisco, CA

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John Seus has 20 years of healthcare industry and consulting experience.  He started his career in pharmaceutical R&D at Procter & Gamble.  Later, John was a partner for eight years at A.T. Kearney and Deloitte Consulting.

John has led projects in strategy, operations and technology for clients in all sectors of the healthcare industry.  He has extensive experience in assisting medical device companies with all aspects of strategy and commercial operations including market assessment, technology assessment, new product launch, pricing, marketing strategy, sales force structure and management and channel strategy.  He has assisted clients in establishing value platforms for key products and technologies and bringing them to market including products in orthopedics, cardiology, minimally invasive surgery, transplantation and in-vitro diagnostics as well as computer operating systems and supply chain technologies.

He also has deep experience in operations improvement, benchmarking, cost reduction, outsourcing and functional strategy development in manufacturing and supply chain, R&D, finance and other back office functions for pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical and medical device companies.

John holds a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where he was ranked second in his class.  He received his MBA from Harvard where he focused on finance and operations.

Location: Seattle, WA

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Mack Amaker has provided and directed business process and technical consulting services for more than 20 years. His primary areas of focus include healthcare services, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, logistics, and consumer goods. His expertise spans process and technical innovation, solution design and implementation.

Selected accomplishments include:

• Built and managed a 25-person information technology organization to support business operations for an international medical equipment company

• Directed a 60-person project to implement shared architecture, customer relationship and financial services to reduce operating costs by 15 to 20 percent for a major equipment manufacturer

• Integrated a new contract management system to provide more accurate and timely financial data and reduce capital costs for a major health insurer

• Developed the financial procurement and payment strategy and identified related web technologies to substantially reduce supplies, materials and internal operating costs for a major pharmaceutical company

• Designed the processes and web-based technologies for tracking capital projects globally to reduce total capital spend for a major pharmaceutical company

Mack is a Certified Public Accountant in New Jersey and Georgia. He has worked for major accounting and software firms.

Location: New York, NY

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Tracy Weber joined Health Business Group (HBG) in 2011 and has 20+ years of strategic and operational experience.  For 15 years, she has worked as a strategy consultant serving clients in the healthcare, technology, and private equity sectors. Earlier, she worked at Fortune 500 technology companies.

Tracy has expertise in healthcare services, technology, payor and provider organizations, and multi-stakeholder non-profit groups.  At HBG, her projects have included: strategic business plan development, private equity due diligence assessments, pricing and packaging work, and fundraising pitch development.

In addition, Tracy has 10 years of high-tech experience.  She started her career planning next generation services and supporting network architectures at Nortel Networks.  At Hewlett Packard/Agilent Technologies, she held roles in marketing, new ventures, and corporate development.  She has domain knowledge in the Technology, Media, and Telecommunications sector as she worked in businesses in the big data, telecom/datacom, wireless, video, and server markets.
Tracy holds a B.Eng. in Electrical Engineering from McGill University and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.  She also earned her Canadian Securities Course (Series 7 equivalent).

Location: Boston, MA

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Prior to Deloitte Consulting, Pat was a Senior Manager in the Boston Consulting Group’s healthcare practice. He has a BS in electrical engineering and mathematics and an MS in computer engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University and earned an MBA with Distinction from Dartmouth’s Amos Tuck School of Business Administration. He has published several articles on M&A strategy, R&D management and supply chain optimization in such publications as Pharmaceutical Executive and Harvard Business Review.

Specialties: Product development and commercialization strategy, R&D management, sales and marketing effectiveness, business process design and IT strategy, mergers and acquisitions, and supply chain/manufacturing management and optimization

Location: Concord, Massachusetts, United States

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Dan Segal was a co-founder of Brain Resource Ltd, an ASX/OTC listed neuroscience company, and was a Board member and its COO/CFO for the last 15 years. For the decade prior to that he was a Director in the Equities Research Department at Citigroup and was highly ranked as a telecommunications and technology sector analyst by many of the largest mutual funds.

Dan has operational experience managing the science commerce interface with the focus on all aspects of what is required to develop and market new healthcare products. This includes strategic plans, regulatory navigation, integration with user workflows, clinical trials, IT development, ISMS and GCP systems and contracting with academia, pharma and payers in the US and internationally. He also has experience in managing coporate and legal affairs as well as in IPOs and fund raising. His role as an equities analyst involved high degree of strategic industry and company analysis and financial modelling.

Dan has been a member of the Australian Institute of Chartered Accountants for 30 years and has qualifications in Science and Commerce (Bachelor of Commerce from the University of New South Wales, Bachelor of Science (Honours) from the University of Sydney and a Master of Science (Physics) from the University of New South Wales). Dan retains an active research interest in connections between physics and the brain and has authored both science and business articles, ranging from Personalized Medicine and digital health to semiconductor physics.

Location: Sydney, Australia

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Claudia Palme is a senior advisor in the global Life Sciences and Health Care industry, based in Dubai, UAE. Her engagements focus on new business models, emerging markets’ expansion in the Middle East and Africa, growth and restructuring strategy, European and MEA market access and investment advisory. Claudia has spent 20 years in senior management and consulting across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Claudia worked for Amgen Middle East Africa as Head of Strategic Planning and Operations in Dubai where she drove regional expansion and handled all regional projects. Prior to Amgen, she was a Principal in the Health Care Practice at booz & company in Europe, Head of Strategy and Health Policy at Novartis Germany and a project manager with The Boston Consulting Group in Munich.

Claudia holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Harvard and a Master’s in Economics from LMU Munich. She has co-published a book on policy reforms in Germany, papers on German health care reform and a number of editorials on the MEA region. Claudia is also a regular speaker and panelist on emerging markets, biosimilars and other subjects, and a member of the CPhI MEA advisory board.

Location: Dubai, UAE

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