New England Biolabs: Jim Ellard, Sal Russello
Jim Ellard, CEO Of New England Biolabs, will retire Aug. 15. He will be succeeded by Salvatore (Sal) Russello, currently NEB's director of OEM and customized solutions. Ellard, who joined NEB in 1984 as a summer intern and became the firm's CEO in 2005, will remain chairman of the board of directors. Russello joined NEB in 2007 as associate director of business development and assumed his current role in 2017. Prior to NEB, he was director of reagent marketing at Caliper Life Sciences, now part of PerkinElmer, and before that, business development manager at Cell Signaling Technology.
Sema4: Shawn Assad, Richard Miao
Sema4 said that its chief accounting officer, Shawn Assad, will resign, effective Aug. 30. According to a regulatory filing, the resignation is "not related to any disagreement with the company's accounting principles or practices or financial statement disclosures." When Assad leaves, current interim CFO Richard Miao — who also serves as deputy CFO and principal financial officer — will take over as Sema4's principal accounting officer.
Guardant Health: Steve Krognes
Guardant Health has appointed Steve Krognes to its board of directors. He currently serves as a director at Denali Therapeutics, Gritstone Bio, and RLS Global. He previously served on the board of Corvus Pharmaceuticals.
Before joining Guardant's board, Krognes was the CFO of Denali Therapeutics. Prior to that, he served in a variety of roles at multinational corporations, including CFO at Genentech. He chaired the Genentech Access to Care Foundation and represented Genentech on the board and executive committee of the California Life Science Association. Before that, he worked as global head of mergers and acquisitions at Roche, as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, and as a venture capitalist in Scandinavia. Krognes holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.S. in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
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