Sema4: Rachel Sherman
Genetic testing and informatics firm Sema4 has appointed Rachel Sherman to its board of directors.
Sherman is a former principal deputy commissioner of food and drugs at the US Food and Drug Administration. Her career at FDA spanned almost three decades and she oversaw HIV drug development, directed the Critical Path initiative, launched expedited review, and guided the establishment of the oncology center of excellence program.
She is currently a drug development, regulatory, and policy consultant at a firm she founded last year after retiring from FDA, and a lecturer at Harvard Medical School's Department of Population Medicine. She also serves on the board of Aptinyx, a pharmaceutical firm.
Sherman holds an MD from Mount Sinai School of Medicine and a master's degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University.
Thermo Fisher Scientific: Paul Parker
Paul Parker will join Thermo Fisher Scientific as VP of strategy and corporate development, starting April 15. He will join the company from Goldman Sachs, where he was co-chairman of global mergers & acquisitions and a member of the firm's partnership committee. Previously, he held operating and client relationship roles at Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Lehman Brothers, and JP Morgan. Parker has degrees from Harvard Business School and from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Biodesix: Kieran O'Kane, Bobbi Coffin
Biodesix has announced a realignment of its commercial executive team. Effective immediately, current head of strategic marketing Kieran O'Kane will become the company's chief commercial officer, while Bobbi Coffin, currently chief marketing officer, will become the firm's chief growth officer.
After joining the company in 2018, Biodesix said that O'Kane played a leading role in the successful acquisition of Integrated Diagnostics and Oncimmune's laboratory and incidental pulmonology nodule malignancy test, proving instrumental in the subsequent commercial launch of what are now the Nodify XL2 and Nodify CDT tests. He previously worked at various other companies, including NanoString Technologies, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Roche.
Coffin joined Biodesix in 2015 from Exact Sciences where she was VP of commercial marketing and strategy. Prior to that role, she held leadership positions at Precision Therapeutics and Cytyc/Hologic.
For additional 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.