MANAGEMENT TEAM
Patrick Daly, President & CEO
Patrick Daly has over 20 years of experience in medical device sales, marketing, international marketing and leadership positions throughout the Johnson & Johnson organization including Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Ethicon Products, J&J Medical Australia/New Zealand, J&J Medical Asia Pacific and Cohera Medical, Inc.® Within Johnson & Johnson, he held positions of increasing responsibility in marketing, international marketing and sales. Upon discovering the opportunity in a non-J&J company, he spearheaded the Ethicon Endo-Surgery acquisition and worldwide development of the hand-assisted laparoscopic surgery (HALS) business that developed into a $48M per year franchise with over $100M in sales over three years. He successfully launched a surgical technology business in Australia and created and implemented the first-ever regulatory review of safety and efficacy of that new technology by the Australian Government. He continued his Johnson & Johnson entrepreneurial-like career track as a marketing leader in J&J Medical Asia Pacific by creating and implementing training and development programs in China, India, Korea, Singapore, and the Philippines. Mr. Daly started Cohera Medical, Inc.® in January 2006 and lead two successful funding rounds of over $23.5M in capital from private investors to facilitate Cohera’s lead product TissuGlu® through the FDA approval process for medical devices. Prior to joining the Cohera Medical, Inc.® and Johnson and Johnson, Mr. Daly spent over four years on active duty in the U.S. Army as a field artillery officer serving around the world. A native of New York, he is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point where he received a B.S. in Engineering with a concentration in Latin American Studies. He played varsity lacrosse during his four years at West Point and was an All-American.
Eric Beckman, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Beckman is a co-founder of Cohera Medical, Inc.® and is the primary inventor of the company’s proprietary adhesive technology. He joins Cohera on an entrepreneurial leave of absence from his position as George Bevier Professor of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Chemical Engineering, where Dr. Beckman is also co-Director of the Mascaro Sustainability Initiative and where he previously served as Chairman of the Department of Chemical Engineering. Dr. Beckman received his PhD in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Massachusetts. He has held positions in industry, including positions at Monsanto Plastics and Resins and Union Carbide's Silicones and Urethanes Intermediates Division. Dr. Beckman received the 2002 Academic Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award from the EPA, and was honored by the Engineers' Society of Western Pennsylvania as the 2005 Engineer of the Year.
Dottie Clower, PhD, Vice President of Research and Development and Operations
Prior to joining Cohera, Dr. Clower specialized in commercializing early-stage technologies through her leadership position in the University of Pittsburgh’s Office of Enterprise Development. She was instrumental in the early formation of Cohera dating back to 2003 and led the development of Cohera from its ideation to its successful seed financing. Dr. Clower is a neuroscientist and chemist with over fifteen years of research experience in both industrial and academic environments. She received the prestigious Human Frontier Long-Term Fellowship Award, which funded her neuroscience research performed at the Institute of Cognitive Science in Lyon, France. Her work has been published in Nature, Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Neurophysiology and Cerebral Cortex. She also brings experience from Baxter Healthcare where she worked on the development of pre-mixed I.V. drug delivery systems within Baxter’s Pharmaceutical R&D Division. Dottie holds a B.A. in Chemistry from Northwestern University in Chicago and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Emory University in Atlanta.
Chad Coberly , MBA, JD, Vice President of Clinical, Regulatory and Legal Affairs
Chad has more than 15 years of experience in the medical device industry, primarily in the areas of regulatory/clinical affairs, compliance, quality systems, intellectual property, business development, litigation and general legal affairs. Prior to joining Cohera, he served as the VP of Legal and Regulatory Affairs for Zassi Medical Evolutions, where he lead the regulatory and legal aspects of the Worldwide commercialization and later the successful divestiture of a gastrointestinal catheter line. He brings intellectual property experience from the law firm of Howard and Howard, and the Surgical Group of the Stryker Corporation where he held regulatory and legal related positions. He has published articles in Food and Drug Law Institute publications and has held board-level positions with Medical Device Associations. Chad holds a J.D. from Michigan State University and a bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering from Tulane University. He also has completed MBA studies at Boston University. He is admitted to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and is a member of the Michigan Bar.
Rich Wonsettler, Vice President of Finance and CFO
Rich has nearly 20 years financial management experience with emerging private and public companies. Prior to joining Cohera Medical, Inc.®, Rich was the CFO for Active Media / ClubCom, Inc., venture-capital- backed, start-up companies in Pittsburgh, PA for which he built the accounting and treasury departments. Prior to this, Rich was the CFO and Treasurer for SMT Health Services, Inc. (SMT), a Wexford, PA based healthcare services provider. He was the head of SMT’s finance department when the company was owned by private equity firm Apollo Management L.P. Rich has also served as an independent financial consultant to early stage venture-capital backed companies and earlier in his career, he was an audit professional with KPMG L.L.P. In addition, Rich has extensive mergers and acquisition experience and has been directly involved in completing numerous transactions. Rich is a Certified Public Accountant and a member of the Pennsylvania Institute of Certified Public Accountants (PICPA). He received a bachelor’s degree of accounting from Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, PA.
Bill Cotter, Vice President of Manufacturing
Bill Cotter has over 30 years of manufacturing, production and logistics experience in the medical device, diagnostics, biologics and life science industries. He was most recently the VP of Operations at Helicos BioSciences, a Cambridge, MA, start up involved in the development and production of True Single Molecule- DNA SequencingTM technology. Mr. Cotter was the VP of Operations at Closure Medical Corp for 10 years, a medical device company that developed and commercialized the first synthetic topical skin adhesive to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In addition to his operations role at Closure Medical, he was the development project leader and co-inventor of the Dermabond Topical Skin Adhesive ProPen delivery applicator, which won the 2004 Medical Design Excellence Gold Medal Award. He was part of the senior management team that was involved in the successful acquisition of the company by Johnson & Johnson in 2005. Prior to Closure Medical, he spent eight years with Sanofi Diagnostics Pasteur, where he had responsibility for all North American plant sites and chaired the world wide manufacturing committee for this international in-vitro diagnostics company. Before that he held operations management positions of increasing responsibilities with Advanced Technology Laboratories (now part of Phillips Medical) and Genetic Systems Corp. (now part of Bio-Rad) Mr. Cotter is listed as co-inventor on 8 patents and he has a bachelor's of arts degree in political science from Ohio University.