| Board of Directors | |
Dave Stassen Dave Stassen is a founding Managing Director of Split Rock Partners and a member of the firm's healthcare investment team. While his investing purview spans the country, Dave focuses particularly on the strong medical technology industry in Minnesota. Prior to founding Split Rock Partners, Dave was a General Partner with St. Paul Venture Capital's healthcare team. He rejoined St. Paul Venture Capital in 2000, nine years after he left the firm to lead Spine-Tech, an emerging growth company specializing in development and marketing of revolutionary spinal implant products. Dave led Spine-Tech from its formation in 1991 through growth in revenue to over $100 million. The company was acquired in January 1998 for over $600 million. In acknowledgement of this success, Stassen was named the 1998 Ernst & Young National Entrepreneur of the Year. From 1980 to 1990, Dave was a venture capitalist with North Star Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Minneapolis. Dave began his business career with IBM Corporation. He holds a bachelor's degree in quantitative methods and an MBA from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. Pete McNerney Pete McNerney has over 30 years of health care operating and venture capital experience. In addition to co-founding Thomas, McNerney & Partners, Pete co-founded Coral Ventures in 1992 where he was responsible for health care investing. Pete is currently a board member of a number of medical technology companies. Prior to joining Coral in 1992, Pete was a co-founder and Managing Partner of The Kensington Group, a firm specializing in providing management services to early stage companies in the health care field. In 1986, he founded and was Chief Executive Officer of Memtec North America, a company established to commercialize cross flow membrane microfiltration technology in North America. Previously, Pete spent 11 years with Baxter Healthcare Corporation, where he held various general management positions in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. He has served as President of the Minnesota Venture Capital Association and currently serves on the Board of Trustees of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. A Certified Public Accountant, Pete received a B.A. from Yale and an M.B.A. from Stanford University. Jim Tullis Jim Tullis is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Tullis Health Investors / Tullis-Dickerson. Under his direction, the firm has organized several venture capital funds focused on health care investments including companies representing innovative concepts in pharmaceuticals (e.g. Adams Respiratory, Sirion), biotechnology (BioRexis), medical devices (Adiana, Atritech, Vidacare), medical services (PSS World Medical) and health information technology (QuadraMed). Prior to establishing Tullis Health Investors / Tullis-Dickerson in 1986, Jim was a Senior Vice President of E.F. Hutton & Co. and a Principal at Morgan Stanley & Co. where he led health care investment research, and later healthcare investment banking. During his tenure at Morgan Stanley, he received many accolades; including recognition fourteen times on the Institutional Investor All-Star list of Wall Street's top securities analysts. He was twice named #1 Drug Analyst and was featured on the Wall Street Week television program. Jim is a graduate of Stanford University and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School. He currently serves on the Boards of several public and private companies. Brendan O'Leary Brendan O'Leary is a General Partner at Prism VentureWorks where he has focused on companies in the medical device, pharmaceutical, and diagnostic sectors since 2003. Dr. O'Leary's current investments include Alacer Biomedical, Locus Pharmaceuticals, Proteon Therapeutics, ROX Medical, and Trius Therapeutics. He was previously a director at BioRexis Pharmaceutical Corporation (acquired by Pfizer) and Serica Technologies (acquired by Allergan). Dr. O'Leary has more than a dozen years of experience in the biotechnology and medical technology arenas and has held numerous operating and technical positions at companies including Meso Scale Discovery, a high-throughput drug discovery start-up, and IGEN International, a leading medical diagnostics company (acquired by Roche). He is an accomplished scientist with numerous publications, inventions, and commercialized products to his credit. Dr. O'Leary holds a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a B.A. in Chemistry and Economics from Middlebury College, and was a Kauffman Fellow. Dr. Robert Van Tassel Dr. Robert Van Tassel received his undergraduate degree and Doctorate in Medicine from the University of Minnesota. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine at the Hennepin County Hospital in Minneapolis and a fellowship in cardiovascular disease at the University of Minnesota Hospital. He served two years as a Flight Surgeon in the United States Air Force. Dr. Van Tassel is a board certified cardiologist and served as a Senior Consultant in Cardiology at the Minneapolis Heart Institute at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis and as a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota until his retirement in 2010. He is a founder of the Minneapolis Heart Institute and past president of the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation. He holds several patents in the medical device space and has been a founding member of seven medical device companies and is a board member of numerous emerging medical device companies. |