All Access Healthcare - Regional Life Sciences Outlook

Mary Howard is a serial entrepreneur and founder of Westchester County Biosciences Accelerator, a competitive entry life sciences accelerator program initiated by Westchester County Office of Economic Development. The program launched in 2020 and 30 alums collectively raised $15M since 2020 and created 62 full time jobs. FirstXFounder also delivers the ELabNYC, ABCT and Next Milestone life science accelerator programs.

Teresa Leste is a Principal at Deloitte Consulting and leads the U.S. Life Sciences mid-market

practice. Her experience spans the cross functional value chain, and she advises CXO executives on managing growth with emphasis on enterprise value maximization. She is a member of Deloitte’s Life Sciences & Healthcare Industry Leadership Team and also manages the industry alliances portfolio.

Teresa has expertise in the area of life sciences & healthcare industry profitability, consolidation and convergence, and is currently developing new platform centered, ecosystem-based business models.

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‏Prior to the merger with Deloitte in 2013, Teresa was a Partner at Monitor Group where she led the US Life Sciences practice. Teresa has over 25 years of experience in strategic advisory consulting and worked at a top three Medtech multinational prior to consulting. Over the course of her career, she has gained a deep global perspective working in-market in over 25 countries including a three-year assignment based in France.

Teresa serves on the Board of Directors at the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF), the

BioNJ Board, and the University of Florida Machen Scholars Leadership Council.

George Santo is a Relationship Executive and Banker with J.P. Morgan’s Life Sciences Commercial Banking team, based in New York. He works with biotechnology, medical device, and diagnostic companies, helping them solve their financial services needs, including cash management, international banking, debt financing, and guiding strategic dialogue across various J.P. Morgan partners.

Prior to joining J.P. Morgan, George served as a Senior Research Associate in the Equity Research division of RBC Capital Markets from 2014 to 2016, covering companies in the Medical Supplies & Devices sector. George began his career at Citi, serving as a Finance Analyst in the Hybrid Derivatives trading division of Citi and as an Assistant Vice President in Corporate Treasury.

George is a holder of the right to use the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation, and is a registered securities representative, and currently holds Series 7, 63, 79, and 87 licenses. He received a B.S. in Finance from New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business, and an M.B.A. from Cornell University’s S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management.

Rajiv (“Raj”) Ratan received his B.A. in Neuroscience (Magna Cum Laude) from Amherst College in 1981 and received the John Woodruff Simpson Fellowship in Medicine. He completed an M.D. and Ph.D. at the New York University School of Medicine where he graduated as a member of AOA in 1988. He completed his Ph.D. with Dr. Michael Shelanski (Chair of Pathology at Columbia University) and Dr. Frederick Maxfield (Chair of Biochemistry at Cornell) where he focused on novel methods to monitor calcium gradients in living cells.

He completed an Internship in Medicine at the University of Chicago and was a Neurology resident and then Chief Resident in Neurology at Johns Hopkins (1991-1992). He was awarded the Jay Slotkin Award for excellence in research while a resident; and subsequently received the Passano Foundation Clinician Scientist Award while completing a fellowship in Neurorehabilitation and a post-doc in the Department of Neuroscience at Hopkins. In 1994, he was promoted to Assistant Professor of Neurology and Rehab Medicine at Hopkins and he started his own lab with the help of his post-doc mentor, Jay Baraban.

In 1996, he was recruited to set up the Neuroprotection Laboratory in the Department of Neurology and Program in Neuroscience at Harvard Medical School (Harvard Institutes of Medicine and Beth Israel Hospital). He became an Associate Professor at Harvard in 1999.

In 2002, Dr. Ratan moved to Burke to Direct the Research Institute. He was formally appointed the Winifred Masterson Burke Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience at Weill Medical College in 2004 and named an Associate Dean for the medical college in 2011.

In 2019, Dr. Ratan co-founded NeuroCuresNY, a novel clinical trial platform aimed at curing chronic neurological disability. Funded through the Empire State Development Corporation, NCNY is a not-for-profit initiative formed by Burke Neurological Institute, University of Rochester Neurorestoration Institute, and the National Center for Adaptive Neurotechnologies at the Stratton VA Medical Center. Working together with patients, caregivers, clinicians, and scientists, NCNY will create a community focused on accelerating the discovery of effective treatments for patients with chronic neurological disabilities.

Deborah Viola, PhD is Vice President, Office of Research and Grants Administration (RGA) at Westchester Medical Center Health Network. The RGA functions as the Protocol Activation Committee for research proposals for investigator-initiated, government agency, and industry-sponsored human subject clinical studies and works closely with the Institutional Review Board to ensure each proposal has been reviewed for human subjects’ protection, legal, regulatory, data security and financial compliance. The RGA also provides oversight for network-wide grants management for non-human subject research and proposals that fund capital, educational, patient care, or community-based programs.

Dr. Viola is a member of the Life Sciences Taskforce in Westchester County. In her role she supports local and regional business development with an emphasis on translational cellular therapy studies. Westchester Medical Center (WMC), the flagship of WMCHealth, has a long-term academic affiliation with New York Medical College and is co-located on the Valhalla campus. Prior to joining WMCHealth, Dr. Viola was an Associate Professor, Director and Co-founder of the Doctoral Program in Health Policy and Management and the Center for Long Term Care Research & Policy at New York Medical College. She remains on the faculty as Adjunct Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management. Her most recent research with colleagues from MIT and Stanford focused on enhancing the value of machine learning-based clinical decision support tools. She received a doctorate in economics from the Graduate School at the City University of New York as a Robert E. Gilleece Fellow.