NASHVILLE, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nashville Biosciences, LLC (NashBio), a leading real-world, multi-omics data company, today announced that it has newly appointed Dan Benetz as its chief financial officer (CFO) and Geoff Nilsen as vice president and head of omics. The company has also promoted Curt Allen, MBA, to vice president of sales and Wacey Richards to vice president of engineering.
“With their experience and expertise, these four leaders are an asset to our executive team as we continue to build out our vision to be the indispensable real-world omics resource for life sciences research and development,” said Leeland Ekstrom, PhD, co-founder, chief executive officer and director of NashBio. “Our mission is to make complex healthcare data easy to use for our partners in the biopharmaceutical, diagnostics and AI industries, enabling them to bring about clinically meaningful discoveries and therapeutics that make a difference in the lives of patients.”
As the new CFO, Mr. Benetz brings more than 30 years of experience helping health and genomic technology companies accelerate growth by leveraging their financial analysis, business modeling, data analytics and financial systems. He has served as a partner at TechCXO, a company that provides on-demand, fractional executives. Previously he held CFO positions at Xsolis, The Tugboat Group and NuGEN Technologies, as well as other leadership positions at Affymetrix and Intel. He received a bachelor of science in mathematics/applied sciences from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Mr. Nilsen will be responsible for developing and executing NashBio’s multi-omics analytic services, data product and expansion strategies, as well as supporting its scientific business development efforts. He has a proven record of building and managing bioinformatics and software teams that support ultrahigh throughput science, in both research and clinical contexts. Prior to this role, he held various leadership roles of increasing responsibility at Illumina, Apton Biosystems, Invitae, Complete Genomics, and Perlegen Sciences. He earned a bachelor of science in biological sciences and symbolic systems from Stanford University in California.
Mr. Allen joined NashBio in 2022 as director of sales for imaging and has been promoted to vice president of sales. His prior work experience includes director of international sales and business development at Subtle Medical, general manager of North America, magnetic resonance (MR) at Esaote and MR regional director at GE Healthcare. He received a master of business administration from Southeastern Louisiana University and a bachelor of science from the University of Southern Mississippi.
Throughout his career, Mr. Richards has helped numerous companies with their design, development and architecture strategies. He is a skilled software developer and bioinformatician who bridges biochemistry, hardware, clinical and business functions. Prior to joining NashBio in 2022 as director of engineering, he most recently served in leadership positions at Swell, DeepSee and Lingotek, and founded Secure Cloud, a professional services company specializing in IT, software development, AI and data. He received a bachelor of science in cloud and systems administration from Western Governors University in Salt Lake City.
“We continue to recruit impressive talent to our team in our relentless pursuit to create real-world clinical, genomic and imaging data products that can provide unparalleled clinical insight, resources and expertise to a wide range of R&D challenges,” added Dr. Ekstrom. “In essence, smarter data that enable smarter outcomes.”
About NashBio
Nashville Biosciences, LLC (NashBio), a wholly owned subsidiary of Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), was created to harness the Medical Center's extensive genomic and bioinformatics resources for drug and diagnostics discovery and development. Leveraging Vanderbilt University innovation, NashBio serves as a commercial interface between outside companies and the formidable research capabilities housed within VUMC, including BioVU®, one of the world's most comprehensive genetic databases linked to de-identified medical records with years of longitudinal clinical data. This unique asset is one of the largest and highest quality of its kind, providing an opportunity to guide R&D activity in biotech, pharma, diagnostics, medical devices and other life sciences applications. For more information, please visit the recently updated NashBio.com and connect with us on LinkedIn and YouTube.
