SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Verana Health, the developer of a cutting-edge platform for life science innovation that utilizes regulatory-grade specialty data sets, today announced the appointment of three key executives with significant experience in the healthcare and technology industries as the company continues to strategically expand its team following a $30M series C financing and the appointment of Miki Kapoor as Chief Executive Officer. These executives include Marc Berger as Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Ellenmarie Rhone as Senior Vice President of People and Culture, and Don Butler as Vice President of Life Science, Commercial.
As Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Marc Berger will manage all of the company’s legal functions. Marc served as General Counsel at Flatiron Health, where he managed the company’s corporate, privacy, commercial contracting, health law, and intellectual property activities. He was previously Vice President and Assistant General Counsel at Medidata Solutions. Through these roles, Marc brings two decades of experience as an attorney with the last fifteen years working hand-in-hand with data companies and the life science industry on legal matters.
Ellenmarie Rhone joins Verana Health as Senior Vice President of People and Culture and will play an instrumental role in further building Verana’s team as the company actively brings on new talent. Ellenmarie was previously Vice President of Human Resources at FirstBest, where she established the HR infrastructure from the ground up and developed culture, policies and processes which resulted in almost no voluntary turnover during her tenure. Most recently, Ellenmarie served as Vice President of Talent and Training for ReacHIRE, a startup that enables experienced, executive-level women to return to the workforce after a career break.
Serving as Vice President of Life Science, Commercial, Don Butler will co-lead Verana Health’s commercialization strategy along with existing Vice President and industry veteran Chet Kumar. Under their leadership, the company will pursue additional data applications, disease areas, and partnerships to support the rapid development of new pharmaceuticals and devices. Don has held many senior life science commercial roles at industry leading companies, including Senior Vice President of Global Enterprise Sales at Medidata Solutions, Senior Vice President of Clinical Research Solutions at Outcome Health, and Director of Sales at Oracle Life Sciences.
“I am thrilled to have leaders of such a high-caliber round out our executive team as we continue to build intelligent data solutions that provide actionable insights for the life science industry and physicians alike,” said Miki Kapoor, Chief Executive Officer of Verana Health. “Marc, Ellenmarie and Don bring a wealth of healthcare, technology, and leadership experience to Verana, and I look forward to their invaluable contributions to further the company’s aggressive growth and commercial traction.”
In the coming months, Verana will continue to recruit for additional key positions on its leadership team as well as rapidly scale its clinical data science and software teams to develop new technology solutions for the life science industry and physicians.
About Marc Berger
Marc Berger is Senior Vice President and General Counsel at Verana Health, responsible for all of the company’s legal functions. Mr. Berger was previously General Counsel at Flatiron Health, where he managed Flatiron’s corporate, privacy, commercial contracting, health law, and intellectual property activities. As General Counsel, he was a member of the four-person executive team that negotiated the $2.1B acquisition of Flatiron by Roche. Prior to Flatiron Health, Mr. Berger was Vice President and Assistant General Counsel at Medidata Solutions, where he had global responsibility for negotiating agreements with life science companies and partners for Medidata’s clinical trial technology and service offerings. He also led the development of contracting standards, and terms and conditions across the business to support the company’s rapid growth from a private to a publicly traded company. Mr. Berger has also served as corporate counsel at Avaya, a global B2B technology company, and has spent time in private practice focusing on corporate formation, IP protections, product creation and distribution channels, government transactions and regulatory affairs, cybersecurity audits, and identifying government, and private funding opportunities.
Mr. Berger received his JD and MBA from the University of Miami School of Law, and his BS in Management and International Business from Penn State University.
About Ellenmarie Rhone
Ellenmarie Rhone is Senior Vice President of People & Culture at Verana Health, where she is responsible for leading all human capital efforts. Her focus is on sourcing and developing talent and executing strategic programs that support culture and engagement. Ms. Rhone is a seasoned human resources leader with substantial experience building high-performing teams and operating systems for high growth technology companies. She was most recently Vice President of Talent and Training for ReacHIRE, a venture-funded startup that works with experienced, executive-level women who are looking to return to the workforce after a career break. Ms. Rhone previously served as Vice President of Human Resources for FirstBest, an enterprise software company where she established the HR infrastructure from the ground up and developed culture, policies and processes which resulted in almost no voluntary turnover during her tenure. She started her professional career as a teacher in the Boston school system and her Human Resources career in healthcare.
Ms. Rhone earned her MBA from Simmons School of Management, and her Bachelor's in Education from Bridgewater State University.
About Don Butler
Don Butler brings more than 24 years of sales and business leadership experience to Verana Health, where he serves as Vice President of Life Science, Commercial. Mr. Butler joins Verana from Outcome Health, where he served as the Senior Vice President of Clinical Research Solutions. He was responsible for the strategy and execution of their business focused on increasing patient awareness and engagement in clinical trials. Prior to Outcome Health, Mr. Butler was Senior Vice President of Global Enterprise Sales at Medidata Solutions, where he led the global sales team responsible for selling clinical and data analytics solutions that support over half of the world's clinical trials. He has also held sales leadership roles for Oracle Health Sciences and Siebel Life Sciences.
Mr. Butler holds a Bachelor's degree in business from Ithaca College and recently became an alumni of Harvard Business School after completing an extensive executive education program. He is actively involved with the Boys and Girls Club of Monmouth County, NJ.
About Verana Health
Innovation in healthcare is hindered by the time and cost of bringing new therapeutics and devices to market. Verana Health is building a cutting-edge platform for life science innovation that utilizes regulatory-grade specialty data sets. This platform initially utilizes real-world ophthalmic data from the largest specialty clinical database in medicine, representing over 50 million patients and billions of data points, to deeply understand patient needs and to optimize drug and device development from clinical research through to post-commercialization. To learn more, visit www.veranahealth.com and follow us on Twitter at @veranahealth.