Dawn Hocevar
Dawn Hocevar is President & CEO at BioCT. She is the 2017 President and Board Chair of Women In Bio and has spent the last five years in various roles with Women In Bio including: fundraising, national program chair and helped establish Women In Bio’s Boardroom Ready program. Women In Bio has 13 chapters across the country with over 2000 members. With her most recent role as Vice President, Business Development with BioSurplus she worked closely with BIO and affiliates across the country helping to grow vendor programs and membership. With BioSurplus, she seeded and built business platforms in San Francisco as well as Boston and the New England area including Connecticut.
She excels in building relationships and her vast network adds tremendous value to her work with BioCT. She has experience in distribution, sales, management and marketing with her 20 years working with Fisher Scientific. She obtained her BS in Microbiology and Chemistry from San Jose State University and worked at Stanford University for six years prior to joining Fisher Scientific.
Jayson Bernstein
Jayson Bernstein joined American Laboratory Trading, Inc. (ALT) in 2009 and has served as its president since 2015. Headquartered in East Lyme, CT, ALT provides two key services – as a leading supplier of premium refurbished lab equipment and as a prominent provider of surplus lab asset management solutions for labs around the world. Under his direction, ALT has sustained continuous growth highlighted by the grand opening of their west coast facility in San Diego in 2014.
Bernstein has leveraged the company’s access to early stage, small to medium sized biotech companies, and academia by securing key alliances with some of the most reputable names in the industry, including BIO and Agilent Technologies – two organizations that understand the benefit of reaching this important demographic.
To further enhance ALT’s mission of serving the early stage and start-up community, Bernstein secured sponsorships and partnerships with life science incubators and collaborative laboratory spaces across the country including LabCentral in Cambridge, MA, QB3@953 in San Francisco, BioLabs network of shared lab space in Cambridge, MA, San Diego, Durham, NC, and New York City, and as a founding sponsor of BioCT Innovation Commons. To date, ALT has committed $2 million dollars in instruments and services to this initiative.
Stanley Choy
Stanley Choy has been a finance executive and business leader for over 20 years both in the pharmaceutical and legal industries. A science entrepreneur, he was most recently Vice President, Finance and Administration of Kolltan Pharmaceuticals. Prior to joining Kolltan in 2009, Mr. Choy was the chief financial officer for a leading Am Law 100 law firm, Edwards Angell, Palmer & Dodge LLP. From 2003-2006, Mr. Choy served as financial controller with Shearman & Sterling LLP, managing the firm’s finance and accounting organization, including fiscal and reporting functions. Prior to joining the legal industry, Mr. Choy spent eleven years at Pfizer Inc., and held several senior finance management positions with Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, Inc., including finance director of business planning for the Consumer Health Care Division, finance director of the Asia & Latin America Region for the Animal Health Care Division, and finance director of the U.S. and Asia Region for the Corporate Finance and Treasurer’s Division. Mr. Choy spent four years at Arthur Andersen & Company in the audit and tax practices early in his career. Stan has an M.B.A. from Syracuse University and is a Certified Public Accountant. He is a member of the American Institute of CPA’s, NYS Society of CPAs, Law Firm CFO Group, and Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) Finance and Tax Committee. Mr. Choy currently serves as Co-Chair and Treasurer on the Board of Directors of Connecticut United for Research Excellence (CURE) and as Advisor to BioCT Innovation Commons. Stan also plays a significant role in business development for Science ClubhouseCT.
Peter Farina, Ph.D.
Dr. Peter Farina is an Executive in Residence at Canaan Partners, a venture capital firm located in Westport, CT where he assesses and advises on pharma/biotech/healthcare investments. He is also the managing partner of a consulting firm, Salient Science & Technology, LLC which advises several US and Chinese biotech firms on strategic and technical matter in pharmaceutical R&D. Dr. Farina currently serves as the Co-Chair and Board Member of Connecticut United for Research Excellence (CURE); the Advisory Board of the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy, member of the NIH Blueprint Neurotherapeutics Network (BPN) steering committee; Emory University DRIVE Advisory Board, and was a Founder and CEO of Developing World Cures, a nonprofit company working on neglected diseases. Dr. Farina has a PhD in organic chemistry from SUNY Buffalo and did postdoctoral work in bioorganic chemistry at Pennsylvania State University with Dr. Stephen Benkovic. In May 2014 Dr. Farina was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the UConn School of Pharmacy for his career accomplishments, leadership in pharmaceutical sciences, and contributions to community and education.
J. Richard Lee
Mr. Lee co-founded O,R&L Commercial, a full-service Real Estate Company comprised of brokerage, property management and construction divisions. He successfully marketed the company to be a leader in the real estate and construction industry in Connecticut. The brokerage division has been recognized nationally in Barron’s and in the New York Times for its successful marketing of millions of dollars of distressed and foreclosed real estate.
For the past 20 years, O,R&L Commercial has been leasing and selling commercial real estate in the state of Connecticut. Approximately 2,000,000 square feet of it has been in the markets of New Haven, Fairfield, New London and Hartford counties. His clients include a range of corporations both locally and nationally, private individuals, investors, developers, and partnerships.
Frank J. Marco, J.D.
Frank Marco is a partner in Wiggin and Dana’s Corporate Practice Department and Chair of the firm’s Private Equity and Emerging Companies Practice Group and Co-Chair of the Clean Technology Practice Group. He has over 30 years of experience in corporate, finance and securities law. His practice focuses on representing venture capital investors and emerging growth companies in capital formation, mergers and acquisitions, public offerings, joint ventures, strategic alliances, licensing, research and development, corporate governance and related matters. He regularly counsels institutional clients on corporate transactions such as mergers and acquisition, spin-offs and corporate ventures. Representative transactions include the sale of a wireless systems company to Cisco Systems, Inc., the sale of a fiberoptics switching company to Sycamore Networks, representing companies in venture capital financings ranging in size up to $100 million, representation of a major financial services company in an equity joint venture, the merger of a client’s oil and gas metering business with Expro Group for $60.5 million and a restructuring and spin-off to the client’s stockholders of its other business lines, and the creation of venture capital investment vehicles. Frank’s experience, which includes six years in the General Counsel’s office of General Electric Company, where he was also General Counsel to General Electric Venture Capital Corporation, gives him a unique background in the venture capital process and in corporate ventures.
Harry H. Penner, Jr., J.D.
Harry Penner has 30+ years of management experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. He has previously co-founded seven other biotechnology companies, including Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, Marinus Pharmaceuticals, Affinimark Technologies, Prevention Pharmaceuticals, RxGen, MAKScientific, and RHEI Pharmaceuticals. From 1993 to 2001, he was President, Chief Executive Officer and Vice Chairman of Neurogen Corporation, a publicly-traded biotechnology company, and from 1985 to 1993, he was Executive Vice President of Novo Nordisk A/S in Denmark and the US. He has also been Chair of the Connecticut Technology Council and Chair of the Connecticut Board of Governors of Higher Education.
Christine Slocumb
Christine Slocumb is President of Clarity Quest Marketing and has over 20 years of marketing, business development, and product management experience in Fortune 50 and startup firms. As the founder of Clarity Quest Marketing, she has grown revenues for healthcare and technology firms. She believes marketing must be accountable for producing tangible results and positive ROI. She is an innovative problem-solver with strong acuity for marketing financial analysis, revenue forecasting, resourcing and fearless marketing. Christine holds 8 U.S. patents, along with MSEE and MBA degrees.
David Wurzer
Dave is responsible for managing the investment function at Connecticut Innovations, which includes staffing, portfolio and risk management, outreach, budget planning, and performance measurement. He also is responsible for oversight of the Connecticut Science Innovation Fund (CBIF) and the Regenerative Medicine Research Fund (RMRF).
When he joined CI in 2009 as a senior managing director of investments, Dave had extensive senior-level experience in operations and finance, including more than 10 years as executive vice president, treasurer and CFO of CuraGen Corporation (NASDAQ: CRGN), a former CI portfolio company. Dave guided the biotech company through its initial public offering and helped raise more than $700 million. Dave was also involved in negotiating strategic and business development alliances with several pharmaceutical and biotech companies, including Roche, Bayer and Amgen-Freemont (Abgenix). He helped to grow CuraGen and its technology development subsidiary into an operation with more than 500 employees and a market capitalization as high as $5.3 billion.
Dave began his professional career with Coopers & Lybrand in Hartford, Conn. (now part of PricewaterhouseCoopers), where he held various accounting and managerial positions.
