Officers & Directors
Officers:
The employees of Sunshine Heart are key in realising the value of the Company. The senior management staff and engineers at Sunshine Heart have a wealth of experience in medical device and heart assist device development and commercialisation. The number of staff is very small, a reflection of the experience of this management team which helps to minimise the burn rate of the Company.
Donald Rohrbaugh MSME - CEO
Mr Rohrbaugh joined Sunshine Heart in September 2002 as a consultant. Mr Rohrbaugh became the CEO in January 2003 and is responsible for implementing the Company's tactics and strategies approved by the Directors.
Previously, Mr Rohrbaugh was the founding CEO and Director of Acorn Cardiovascular, Inc., a company engaged in developing a non-active device treatment for heart failure. He currently serves as Acorn's Chairman. During Mr Rohrbaugh's role as President and Chief Executive Officer, from December 1997 to December 2001, Acorn completed four rounds of financing totalling US$47.6 million to advance the innovative Cardiac Support Device, CorCap, from concept to Phase II randomised clinical trials in the US and Europe.
Prior to joining Acorn, Mr Rohrbaugh was President of eMed Corporation and acting COO of AeroGen, Inc., both venture funded device drug delivery companies. From 1977 to 1996, Mr Rohrbaugh held a variety of executive management positions with Baxter Healthcare International, including Vice President of Research and Development for the Edwards Critical Care Division and Vice President/General Manager of the Edwards MDS and Novacor (an LVAD division).
Mr Rohrbaugh has over 25 years of business and product development experience in both the domestic and international medical device markets, including over 12 years with heart failure devices.
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William Peters MD - Medical Director/Chief Technical Officer
Dr Peters is Medical Director and Chief Technical Officer of Sunshine Heart and is responsible for implementing the clinical trials and defining the device development appropriate for the clinical need. Dr Peters is the inventor, co-founder and was the start-up CEO of Sunshine Heart.
Dr Peters has a track record of successful invention and commercialisation in the field of cardiac technologies. Dr Peters previously invented a system for endovascular cardiopulmonary bypass to allow minimally invasive cardiac surgery. This technology was assigned to Heartport Inc. Dr Peters spent two years as a research fellow in minimally invasive cardiac surgery (1994-1995) at Stanford University, California. He was also employed during this time as manager of medical affairs at Heartport, Inc. Heartport Inc., listed on NASDAQ in 1996 and was bought by Johnson & Johnson in 1999.
He completed a medical degree (MB ChB) at Otago University 1989 and a Doctorate of Medicine (MD) at Monash University in 2003. Dr Peters has a strong interest in devices to support the failing heart, and has clinical experience in thoracic transplantation and use of various LVADs (including IABs, Biomedicus, Abiomed, Thoratec and Novacor systems). Dr Peters has authored or co-authored 20 published articles and four book chapters regarding cardiac surgery.
Dr Peters' continued association with heart surgery, as a research fellow in cardiothoracic surgery at Auckland City Hospital, affords Sunshine Heart a very direct view of developments in the heart surgery field generally, and in the field of congestive heart failure in particular.
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Victor Windeyer BE - General Manager & Chief Operating Officer
Victor Windeyer was appointed General Manager of Sunshine Heart Company Pty Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sunshine Heart, Inc. in May 2007 and is responsible for leading the Sunshine Heart team in Australia. In his role as Chief Operating Officer for the parent entity Mr Windeyer is responsible for operations across the Company.
Mr Windeyer joined SHC as Chief Operating Officer in January 2006 from another heart failure device company, Ventracor Limited, where he was program manager for the VentrAssist left ventricular assist device (LVAD).
Mr Windeyer has extensive experience in the development of heart assist and other medical devices and has invented and commercialised novel medical devices. He was previously the Program and Operations Manager at Ventracor Limited, Program Manager of Instrument Design and Development at Vision Systems Limited, Project and Engineering Manager at Clyrcom Limited, and has also worked as a mechanical engineer at Cochlear Limited after graduating with a degree in Mechatronic Engineering from the University of Sydney.
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Brian Bolton B.Com, MBA, FCPA - Chief Financial Officer
Mr Bolton is the Chief Financial Officer and Company Secretary of Sunshine Heart since he joined the Company in April 2007. Mr Bolton is responsible for all financial, taxation, compliance (non-clinical), risk and company secretarial functions.
Mr Bolton has held various financial and treasury executive positions with Esso Australia Ltd during his 16 year tenure in both Australia and the USA. In addition he has 12 years of experience as Chief Financial Officer with ASX listed Plutonic Resources Ltd and Atlantic Gold NL.
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Mr Frugard is responsible for running the quality assurance and regulatory affairs programs of the company. Mr Frugard has been involved in regulatory and quality matters within the medical device industry in the US since 1971. He served in a number of positions within the Baxter Healthcare Group (formerly American Hospital Supply) including being Vice President, Regulatory Affairs, Quality Assurance and Clinical Programs of Edwards Critical Care division of Baxter Healthcare International from 1982 to 1988. After a period as Vice President, Business Development at Edwards Critical Care, Mr Frugard became Vice President, Regulatory Affairs, Quality Assurance and Clinical Programs of Innerspace Medical from 1990 to 1993.
Since 1993 Mr Frugard has been the principal of Gary G. Frugard and Associates, providing regulatory compliance/risk management and other advice to a wide range of companies in the medical device industry, and has obtained CE Mark and FDA approval for a substantial number of companies.
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Board of Directors:
The Board includes Directors with in-depth experience of medical device development and commercialisation. Among the Directors, there is a combined experience of 135 years in medical device development. The Directors have been involved in the regulatory approval and commercialisation of devices and treatments for heart failure and heart disease internationally, particularly in the US and Europe. Directors also have significant links to the large medical device companies such as Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson, Boston Scientific, Guidant and Edwards LifeSciences.
 L-R: Donald Rohrbaugh, Donal O'Dwyer, Dr William Peters, Malcolm McComas and Crispin Marsh. [top]
Malcolm McComas - Chairman
Malcolm McComas is a company director and former lawyer with more than 20 years investment banking experience. He joined the Sunshine Heart board as Chairman in July 2004. He is currently a consultant to Grant Samuel, the investment banking, property services and funds management group and was a director of Grant Samuel from 1999 to 2004.
He previously served for 10 years as Managing Director of Investment Banking at County NatWest and its successor organization Salomon Smith Barney (now Citigroup) and in various executive roles with Morgan Grenfell (now Deutsche Bank) in Melbourne, Sydney and London. He has worked with many high growth companies across various industry sectors and has experience in equity and debt finance, acquisitions and divestments and privatisations.
He has led more than 50 initial public offerings and significant secondary offerings for companies, institutions and governments. He is a director of Pharmaxis Limited and a national councillor of the Financial Services Institute of Australia.
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Donal O'Dwyer - Non-executive member
Mr O'Dwyer became a Director of Sunshine Heart in July 2004.
Mr O'Dwyer has recently relocated to Australia having retired as worldwide president of Cordis Cardiology, the cardiology division of a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, Cordis Corporation. In this role Mr O'Dwyer saw Cordis Cardiology move from number 4 to number 1 in market share worldwide. He led that company through the launch of the revolutionary Cypher drug eluting coronary stent, and he supervised an increase in sales from US$500 million in 2000 to US$2 billion in 2003. Prior to joining Cordis he had a long period with Baxter Healthcare, rising from plant manager in Ireland to president of the Cardiovascular Group, Europe. He brings a wealth of medical device experience to Sunshine Heart.
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Richard Lin MD - Non-executive member
Dr Lin became a Director of Sunshine Heart in December 2002.
Dr Lin is a partner in Three Arch Partners, a Silicon Valley based venture capital firm specialising in funding the development of medical technologies, and a major shareholder in Sunshine Heart. He co-founded Spiration where he was a co-inventor of the primary technology.
Dr Lin has a BS in Biology from Stanford University where he graduated with honours and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He has an MD from Harvard Medical School where he graduated cum laude. While at Harvard, Dr Lin was named a Howard Hughes Scholar. He also has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he was named as an Arjay Miller Scholar for outstanding academic achievement.
Dr Lin trained in general surgery at the University of California, San Francisco. He was also a research scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School. He has authored 16 peer reviewed articles and numerous abstracts.
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Geoffrey Brooke MB BS MBA - Non-executive member
Dr Brooke became a Director of Sunshine Heart in December 2002.
Dr Brooke is managing director of GBS Venture Partners Ltd (GBS - formerly Rothschild Bioscience Managers Ltd), the manager of A$150 million in early staged venture funds. Dr Brooke was Managing Director of GBS for 6 years when it was a part of the Rothschild Group until November 2002, when he and Brigitte Smith purchased the business. With more than 15 years of venture capital experience, Dr Brooke has been the founder, lead investor and director of healthcare and bioscience based companies both in the US and Australia, a number of which have been sold or undertaken IPO's on either NASDAQ or ASX. Prior to joining Rothschild, together with Johnson & Johnson, he co-founded MedVest Inc., a US based early stage venture capital group. A medical graduate of the University of Melbourne with 5 years of clinical experience, Dr Brooke holds an MBA from IMEDE (now IMD) in Switzerland.
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Crispin Marsh BSc - Non-executive member
Mr Marsh has been associated with Sunshine Heart since its inception in 1999, having been the inaugural Chairman of the Company. Mr Marsh has been responsible within Sunshine Heart for administration, legal issues, intellectual property protection, obtaining research grants, contract negotiation and management of corporate relationships.
Mr Marsh is also Managing Director of SCP Technology and Growth Pty Ltd, Sydney, an independent innovation commercialisation consultancy. He has been directly involved in the successful commercialisation of a number of technologies in a variety of technical fields including the medical area. It was in this role that he co-founded Sunshine Heart with Dr Peters.
An Australian patent attorney since 1969, Mr Marsh was managing partner of an Australian firm of patent attorneys for nearly 30 years before establishing SCP. He has a BSc degree from the University of Sydney and is a registered mediator. He has had experience in negotiating significant deals in the United States with large companies in the medical device field, for example his negotiation of a licence to Edwards LifeSciences for the IP content of their LifePath AAA aortic aneurysmal stent-graft.
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Mr John Brennan - Non-executive member
Mr Brennan is a Partner of CM Capital Investments, an Australian venture capital fund manager. CM Capital Investments manages $260 million in early stage venture capital funds focused on the life sciences and telecommunications sectors. Mr Brennan has more than 15 years of venture capital, corporate finance, commercial and legal experience. Prior to joining CM Capital in 2004, Mr Brennan had experience in mergers and acquisitions, divestments, capital raisings, venture capital and private equity gained from corporate and advisory roles both internationally and in Australia.
Mr Brennan started his career as a corporate and commercial lawyer in Brisbane. He subsequently gained international experience in the UK where he worked for GE Capital and Ernst & Young Corporate Finance in M&A and corporate finance roles. At GE Capital Mr Brennan had a pan European M&A role focused on acquisitions, strategic equity investments and divestments for one of its main operating businesses. Mr Brennan holds a Bachelor of Laws degree from Queensland University of Technology.
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William Peters MD - Executive member
[See above]
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Donald Rohrbaugh - Executive member
[See above]
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