CareDx: Keith Kennedy, Jessica Meng, Marica Grskovic
CareDx has appointed Keith Kennedy as chief operating officer, Jessica Meng as chief commercial officer, and Marica Grskovic as chief strategy officer.
Kennedy previously served as CFO at PharmaLogic Holdings and as COO, CFO, and secretary at Veracyte. He has also held key executive positions at MCG Capital and GE Capital, as well as an executive residence at Arlington Capital Partners.
Meng previously served as CCO at Delfi Diagnostics and as general manager of women's health at Myovant Sciences. Prior to that, she held sales and marketing leadership roles at Veracyte and Genentech.
Marica Grskovic has been with CareDx since 2012 where she led the development of the AlloSure product and has held senior leadership roles across operations, R&D, and pharma partnering. She previously held scientific roles at iPierian and True North Therapeutics.
Parse Biosciences: Kaitie Kramer
Kaitie Kramer has joined Parse Biosciences as VP of marketing. Kramer has more than 20 years of commercial biotech experience and joins Parse from Twist Bioscience, where she served as senior director of commercial marketing. She has also held senior marketing and business development roles with Thermo Fisher Scientific, Illumina, and Irvine Scientific.
LetsGetChecked: Francheska Werner
LetsGetChecked has appointed Francheska Werner as head of provider genomics, where she will help develop solutions for healthcare providers to better use genomic information in patient care. Werner most recently served as executive VP of North America at genetic testing firm Oxford Gene Technology overseeing operations in the US and Canada. She previously was head of US sales at Invitae and a regional manager at GeneDx.
Sphere Fluidics: Alex Dickinson
Sphere Fluidics, a company specializing in microfluidics-based solutions for single-cell analysis and isolation, has appointed Alex Dickinson as a nonexecutive director of its board. From 2010 to 2017, Dickinson was senior VP of strategic initiatives at Illumina. He joined Illumina through its acquisition of Helixis, which Dickinson cofounded and led as CEO. He was also the founder and CEO of Luxtera, a supercomputer chip company acquired by Cisco Systems in 2019. Dickinson is also a board member of Gencove; cofounder and a board member of ChromaCode; and cofounder and chairman of Ryght.ai.
MedGenome: Amit Kakar, Felix Olale
MedGenome, a global genomics-driven diagnostics and research services company with offices in Foster City, California, and Bangalore, India, has appointed Amit Kakar as chairman of the board. Kakar takes over from Felix Olale, who concluded his two-year term as board chairman and will focus his efforts on leading the growth of MedGenome's US and North America business.
Kakar has served on the MedGenome board of directors since 2022 and is managing partner and head of Asia at Novo Holdings, a global life sciences investor wholly owned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. He also serves on the boards of Doctor Anywhere, an omni-channel healthcare service provider; ESCO, a Singapore-based life science company; and Qure.ai, a health tech firm headquartered in India. Kakar served as head of healthcare investments at Avenue Capital for eight years, and previously worked at GE Healthcare for over 14 years, holding various senior positions in India, China, and the US. He was also head of M&A and business development at Everlife Asia in Singapore.
Centogene: Peer Schatz, Mary Sheahan, Jonathan Sheldon
Peer Schatz, Mary Sheahan, and Jonathan Sheldon each notified Centogene on Aug. 30 they are resigning from the company's supervisory board, effective Sept. 30, Centogene said in a document filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The company did not provide a reason for the resignations but said that they are not the result of any dispute between the individuals and the firm relating to its operations, policies, or practices.
Schatz, the former CEO of Qiagen, joined Centogene's supervisory board in 2020. Sheahan is the CFO of Avillion, which provides business and other services to drug development and biotechnology firms, and she joined Centogene's supervisory board in 2022. Sheldon is executive VP/senior VP of Digital Insights at Qiagen, according to his LinkedIn profile, and joined Centogene's supervisory board in late 2020.
For additional recent items on executive appointments, promotions, and departures in the omics and molecular diagnostics space, please see the People in the News page on our website.