MIAMI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, Heru Inc. announced several key executive appointments across its leadership team and board of directors to further strengthen the company’s commercial operation and support its next phase of growth.
Fred Drasner, a luminary in enterprise, seasoned venture capitalist, and current Board member, has been appointed as Heru’s Chairman of the Board of Directors. Drasner is currently the Chairman of Three Seasons Capital, a venture capital firm, and has been at the helm of numerous company portfolio exits. A media and communications giant, Drasner acquired both the U.S. News & World Report where he served as CEO, and the New York Daily News where he served as CEO, and co-publisher. He was also the CEO and chairman of Applied Graphics Technologies, and chairman of the Vehicle Production Group.
Joining Heru’s Board of Directors is Ron Williams, a globally recognized business leader and philanthropist. Williams is the former Chairman, President, and CEO of Aetna Inc., and serves on the Board of Directors of American Express and Boeing. In 2011, President Barack Obama appointed Williams to the President’s Management Advisory Board (PMAB) which was established to provide the President and Federal Government recommendations based on insights from the private and non-profit sectors on management and operations.
Chris Dewey, a renowned investor with an impressive venture track record, has also joined Heru’s board. Dewey has decades of financial services experience that began at the high yield bond desk at Bear Sterns. He went on to become a founding board member and angel investor in Mako Surgical which was acquired by Stryker for $1.65bn.
“The addition of Ron Williams and Chris Dewey to our board, with Fred Drasner as Chairman, complements Heru’s existing board structure,” said Mohamed Abou Shousha, MD, PhD, founder, and CEO of Heru. “Their vast experience in corporate development, finance, communications and public health strategy, will provide valuable perspectives aimed at enhancing value for Heru stakeholders.”
Heru is also expanding commercial operations in the U.S. and abroad with the appointment of Terrell (Terry) Herring as Chief Commercial Officer, and the promotion of Corey Nielson to Chief Business Development Officer.
Herring will lead Heru’s commercial team leveraging his decades of experience in building high-performance sales operations to oversee the company’s global commercialization and customer relationship initiatives. He has a proven track record of developing effective commercial strategies while maintaining a customer-focused mindset. Herring joins Heru from Synergistix where he served as Chief Commercial Officer.
Nielson, who previously held the role of Heru’s Chief Customer Officer, built a world-class sales and support operation that solidified the company’s position within vision care. As Chief Business Development Officer, Nielson will lead the company’s global expansion with key strategic accounts.
“With the appointments of Fred, Ron, Chris, Terry and Corey, our leadership team is strengthened. They are titans of business and bring unique blends of experience, skill, and industry perspective. I am eager to see how their influence unfolds as we continue to revolutionize vision care and begin developing new therapeutic applications for personalized augmented vision correction,” said Dr. Abou Shousha.
At the heart of the quickly evolving eyecare industry, Heru has been driving change with its revolutionary, wearable, multimodal platform that exceeds traditional standards in usability, cost, size, and portability to increase patient access to care and facilitate the early detection of sight-threatening, progressive eye conditions.
About Heru
Heru Inc. (www.seeheru.com) is a medical software company focused on the development of next-generation vision exams leveraging commercially available AR/VR head-mounted displays. The company pioneered the first multi-modal wearable solution, which has revolutionized healthcare by introducing several vision exams within a single platform. The platform’s dark adaptation and contrast sensitivity exams establish a market-leading AMD portfolio that may aid physicians in detecting subclinical early AMD and monitoring disease progression. Heru is leveraging its award-winning platform to build a comprehensive solution that is strongly correlated to the current standard of care and exceeds traditional standards of care in usability, cost, size, and portability. Future development includes therapeutic applications for personalized augmented vision correction.
Heru was born out of the University of Miami’s Bascom Palmer Eye Institute.
