Senior Management Team
Gary D. Tollefson, M.D., Ph.D.
President and CEO
Dr. Tollefson has served as our President and Chief Executive Officer and as a member of our board of directors since May 2005. Previously, he spent 13 years at Eli Lilly where he was President of the Neuroscience Product Group from January 1999 to December 2000 and Vice President of Lilly Research Laboratories from January 1997 to March 2004. Dr. Tollefson’s product responsibilities have included Prozac, Strattera, Cymbalta, Symbyax, Serafem, Permax and Zyprexa. Dr. Tollefson has also served as a volunteer Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Indiana University School of Medicine from April 2004 to the present and has established Consilium, Inc., a consulting company dedicated to psychopharmacological product development. He currently holds the senior guest scientific position at Eli Lilly as the Distinguished Visiting Lilly Research Scholar. Dr. Tollefson has previously worked with over 20 small to mid-size companies on product strategy, clinical development, business development, regulatory affairs and commercial opportunity analyses. He serves on the Boards of Directors for Xenoport, Inc. and Cortex Pharmaceuticals, Inc., each publicly traded companies. Dr. Tollefson obtained his M.D. from the University of Minnesota where he went on to complete a residency in psychiatry and a Ph.D. in psychopharmacology.
Anthony A. McKinney
Chief Business Officer
Mr. McKinney has served as our Chief Operating Officer since January 2005. He served as our consultant from July 1, 2004 to December 31, 2004. From June 2003 through January 2005, he was President of LysoPlex LLC, an affiliate of a patient advocacy group focusing on newborn screening for lysosomal storage disorders. From April 2000 through August 2001, Mr. McKinney was Vice President, Drug Development and then Senior Vice President Pharmaceutical Operations of Novazyme Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a biotechnology company involved with protein therapies for orphan diseases. After the Novazyme acquisition by Genzyme in 2001, Mr. McKinney held the role of Senior Vice President and General Manager of Genzyme Therapeutics until May 2003. He also previously held several roles at Texas Biotechnology in Houston from March 1994 through April 2000, where he most recently served as Head of Strategic Planning. Mr. McKinney earned his B.S. degree in Microbiology from the University of Oklahoma and his M.B.A. from Thunderbird, the Garvin School of International Management.
Heather D. Turner
Vice President and General Counsel
Heather Turner began as our General Counsel in July 2007. For the previous two years she worked first as Corporate Counsel and most recently as Associate General Counsel at Conor Medsystems, LLC (previously Conor Medsystems, Inc.), in Menlo Park, CA, a company specializing in drug-eluting stents. From 1999 until 2005, she had been an associate at Cooley Godward Kronish LLP (formerly Cooley Godward LLP), a national law firm, where she advised public and private companies, investors and board members. At both Conor Medsystems and Cooley Godward she advised on matters ranging from public reporting, public offerings, securities law compliance, mergers and acquisitions, commercial contracts, board and committee duties and other general corporate matters. Mrs. Turner has a B.A. from U.C. Santa Barbara and a Juris Doctor degree from UCLA School of Law.
Graham Cooper
Chief Financial Officer
Mr. Cooper has served as our Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer and Secretary since May 2006. Previously, Mr. Cooper held the position of Director, Health Care Investment Banking at Deutsche Bank Securities. During his tenure from August 1997 to February 2006 at Deutsche Bank and its predecessor firm Alex. Brown & Sons, he was responsible for executing and managing a wide variety of financing and merger and acquisition transactions in the life sciences field. From August 1992 to January 1995, he worked as an accountant at Deloitte & Touche, where he earned his C.P.A. Mr. Cooper received a B.A. in Economics with highest distinction from the University of California at Berkeley and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Michael A. Cowley, Ph.D.
Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Cowley is one of our co-founders and has served as our Chief Scientific Officer since November 2006. Dr. Cowley is a scientist in the Division of Neuroscience at the Oregon National Primate Research Center of the Oregon Health & Science University where he is also director of the Electrophysiology Core, a position he has held since December 2001. Research in Dr. Cowley’s lab has focused on the discovery of signals within the body that regulate energy balance, as well as describing how other known signals exert their effects on the brain. Research in the lab now focuses on how these signals from the body change with obesity and how the reward based pathways overrule homeostatic signals of satiety. Dr. Cowley received a B.Sc. in biochemistry from The University of Melbourne and a Ph.D. in reproductive neuroendocrinology from Monash University.
Eduardo Dunayevich, M.D.
Chief Medical Officer
Dr. Dunayevich has served as our Chief Medical Officer since August 2006. Previously, he spent five years with Lilly Research Laboratories where most recently he was a Medical Advisor in the Clinical Neuroscience Program Phase, a position he held from January 2005 to August 2006. At Lilly Research Laboratories, he was responsible for the development of several early phase compounds, overseeing protocol development, clinical trial implementation, data analysis and reporting and adherence to good clinical practice standards. Prior to joining Lilly Research Laboratories, Dr. Dunayevich served as Director of the Clinical Psychobiology Program, Psychobiology Inpatient Unit and Division of Clinical Trials of the Psychotic Disorders Research Program at the University of Cincinnati, a position he held from July 1998 to June 2001. Dr. Dunayevich obtained his M.D. from the Buenos Aires Medical School where he graduated with honors and received residency training in psychiatry at both the Hospital of the Italian Community, Buenos Aires, Argentina and the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
Ronald P. Landbloom, M.D.
Vice President of Medical and Regulatory Affairs
Dr. Landbloom has served as our Vice President of Medical and Regulatory Affairs since September 2006. Previously, Dr. Landbloom spent over four years with Eli Lilly, where he was the Associate Medical Director for Neuroscience in their U.S. affiliate organization from April 2005 to October 2006. Prior to joining Eli Lilly, Dr. Landbloom had over 20 years of clinical, research and teaching experience within the University of Minnesota affiliated teaching programs, where he served from 1981 to March 2002. He has also held administrative positions while in the U.S. Army Medical Corp. and at several major healthcare institutions including HealthPartners Medical Group and Clinics, and Regions Hospital in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Dr. Landbloom has been the principal investigator on over 80 different research projects in the fields of depression, schizophrenia, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and obsessive compulsive disorder. Dr. Landbloom earned his B.S. degree from the University of New Mexico and his M.D. from the University of Minnesota, where he also completed his residency in psychiatry.
Franklin P. Bymaster
Vice President of Neuroscience
Mr. Bymaster has served as our Vice President of Neuroscience since September 2006. Previously, Mr. Bymaster spent more than 30 years as a leading biochemist for Eli Lilly, culminating in his position as the Biochemistry Scientific Leader of the Neuroscience Division and Senior Research Scientist, a position he held from December 1999 to December 2003. At Eli Lilly, Mr. Bymaster made significant contributions in several marketed compounds such as Prozac, Permax, Zyprexa, Strattera, Cymbalta and Symbyax. He has been involved with more than 40 patents, over 45 IND reports, and has published over 160 papers in the field of pharmacology. After retiring from Eli Lilly in 2003, he became a research consultant working with Eli Lilly, Compellis Pharmaceuticals and Hypnion. He is a member of the Society for Neuroscience, CINP, and has academic appointments in the Department of Psychiatry at Indiana University’s School of Medicine and in Pharmacology at the Butler University’s College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. Mr. Bymaster has a B.S. degree in Pharmacy from Butler University and an M.S. degree in Pharmacology from Indiana University.
Carol Baum
Vice President of Commercialization
Ms. Baum joined as our Vice President of Commercialization in March 2008. Prior to joining Orexigen, Ms. Baum served as Vice President of Marketing for Neurocrine Biosciences. During her tenure there from March 2003 to February 2008, she developed the strategic and tactical plan to support the U.S. launch of the company’s lead product candidate. Previously, Ms. Baum served as a Marketing Director for Aventis Pharmaceuticals (now a part of Sanofi-Aventis), where she developed a promotional campaign and strategic plan to support the launch of one of the company’s drugs. Earlier in her career, Ms. Baum held planning and product managing positions of increasing responsibility at Washington University School of Medicine, G.D. Searle and Fujisawa Healthcare. Ms. Baum holds a B.S. degree in Medical Technology from the University of Colorado and an MBA from Webster University.
Walter Piskorski
Vice President of Technical Operations
Mr. Piskorski has served as our Vice President of Technical Operations since November 2007. Previously, he was Vice President, Manufacturing Operations (a title formerly known as Vice President, Outsourcing and Logistics) of Sepracor, Inc., a pharmaceutical company focusing on the treatment of respiratory and central nervous system disorders, from February 1997 to June 2007 and served as a consultant to Sepracor from 1995 to February 1997. Prior to Sepracor, Mr. Piskorski was Vice President, Business Development of Armstrong Pharmaceuticals, Inc. from 1990 to 1995. Mr. Piskorski has a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an M.B.A. from Syracuse University.