Jennifer Cook, Catherine Friedman, Min Cui
Grail has appointed Jennifer Cook as CEO, effective Jan. 2, 2018. She will take over for Bill Rastetter, who has been serving as interim CEO. Rastetter will continue his role as chairman of the board of directors. Cook joins Grail from Roche, where she is currently head of clinical operations in product development for Roche Pharmaceuticals. Previously, she was head of the Europe region for Roche Pharmaceuticals, and has also held research and management positions at Genentech.
Grail has also appointed Catherine Friedman and Min Cui to its board of directors. Friedman is an independent financial consultant and previously held executive positions at investment bank Morgan Stanley, including as managing director and head of West Coast Healthcare and co-head of Biotechnology Practice. She is also on the board of directors at Altaba (formerly Yahoo!), Innoviva, and Radius Health. Cui is founder and managing director of Decheng Capital. He is also on the board of directors at AccuraGen, Ariagen, ARMO BioSciences, CardioMed, EpimAb Biotherapeutics, GenapSys, GeneMDx, Ketai Medical, Levitas, and Sinomed. Previously, he was an investment partner at Bay City Capital and director of strategic investment for the Southern Research Institute.
Pamela Sedmak
Counsyl has appointed Pamela Sedmak to the board of directors. Sedmak is a senior advisor at McKinsey & Company and previously served as president and CEO at Aetna Medicaid/Dual Eligibles. She has also served as senior vice president and chief financial, strategy, and innovation officer at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota and chief financial officer and chief operating officer at CareSource.
Christina Waters
WuXi NextCode appointed Christina Waters senior vice president focusing on rare disease programs and growing the firm's rare disease platform. She is the founder and CEO of Rare Science a non-profit resource and research hub working to find diagnoses and treatments for 3,000 children and families with more than 350 rare disorders in 38 countries.
For more recent items on executive appointments and promotions in the omics and molecular diagnostics industries, please see the People in the News page on our website.