Leadership Team

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Management Team

Katherine D. Crothall, Ph.D.
President, CEO, and Chairman of the Board

Katherine D. Crothall joined Aspire as its President, CEO, and Chairman of the Board in November 2010. Prior to Aspire, Kathy was a Principal at Liberty Venture Partners, a venture capital firm located in Philadelphia, from 2006 until November 2010. Prior to Liberty, Kathy was Founder, President, and CEO of Animas Corporation (NASDAQ: PUMP), a leading manufacturer of insulin infusion pumps located in West Chester, PA, from its inception to its acquisition by Johnson & Johnson (J&J) Corporation (NYSE: JNJ) in February 2006. Prior to Animas, Kathy was also the Founder, President, and CEO of two other medical device companies; Luxar Corporation (Seattle, WA) was founded in 1988 and was sold to ESC Medical (NASDAQ: ESCMF), and Laakmann Electro-Optics, founded in 1978, was sold to Johnson & Johnson in 1981. Kathy continued running Laakmann Electro-Optics for five years post-acquisition.

Kathy received her BS from University of Pennsylvania and her PhD from University of Southern California, both in Electrical Engineering. She holds over 20 patents and is the recipient of several awards including the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2003 and the Greater Philadelphia Raymond Rafferty Entrepreneurial Excellence Award in 2004. Kathy is a director of Adhezion BioMedical and Xanitos, Inc. She is also an overseer of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.

Audrey Finkelstein
Executive VP Sales, Marketing and Clinical Support

Audrey Finkelstein is the Executive Vice President of Sales, Marketing, and Clinical Support for Aspire Bariatrics. Since March 2009, she served as Worldwide Vice President of Advocacy and Professional Relations for LifeScan and Animas Corporation, both part of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies. Prior to that, she was the Executive Vice President of Clinical & Government Affairs for LifeScan and Animas beginning May 2006.

Previously, Audrey was the Executive Vice President - Marketing, Sales, and Clinical Affairs of Animas Corporation from May 2003. From November 1998 to April 2003, she served as the Vice President of Marketing and Clinical Affairs. Prior to this position, Audrey was Director of Clinical Affairs at Luxar Corporation, and subsequently at ESC Medical Systems, which acquired Luxar.

Board of Directors

Katherine D. Crothall, Ph.D.
President, CEO, and Chairman of the Board
(See bio in Management Team, above)

William F. Doyle
Board Member

William F. Doyle (Bill) is founder and General Partner of WFD Ventures, a venture capital company focusing on medical devices and healthcare IT. Prior to founding WFD Ventures, he was a member of J&J’s Medical Devices and Diagnostics Group Operating Committee with responsibility for licensing, acquisitions & strategy. During his tenure, J&J added several important franchises, including Cordis Corporation ($3.1 billion 2008 revenue) and DePuy Orthopedics ($5.0 billion 2008 revenue). Bill was also Chairman of J&J’s Medical Devices Research and Development Council, Worldwide President of Biosense-Webster, a director of Cordis Corporation and the medical device director of Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation (J&J's venture capital subsidiary). Prior to J&J, Bill was a senior partner of Insight Venture Partners and a management consultant in the global healthcare practice of McKinsey & Company, where he played a leadership role in establishing J&J’s Ethicon Endo-surgery subsidiary ($4.3 billion 2008 revenue). He was also a founder of Durel Corporation, a joint venture of Rogers Corporation and 3M, and was the first employee of American Superconductor Corporation. Bill holds an S.B. in engineering from MIT and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

William A. Graham, IV
Board Member

William A. Graham (Bill) has been the majority owner of The Graham Company, one of the largest insurance agencies in the country, since 1972. From 1970 to 1999, he served as President, and currently serves as Chairman, CEO, and President. The Graham Company has provided clients with superior protection and peace of mind for half a century. Bill graduated with a BS degree in Business Administration from Bucknell University, and is on the following Boards: Bucknell University Board of Trustees, Independence Visitor Center Corporation (IVCC), Guest Counts Hospitality, and Xanitos, Inc. He was formerly on the Board of Directors of Animas Corporation (prior to its sale to Johnson & Johnson) and Philadelphia Media Holdings (former parent company of The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Daily News).

David S. Joseph
Board Member

David S. Joseph’s (David) career spans forty years of highly successful hospital management and entrepreneurship as a founder/CEO of five companies involved in surgical lasers, orthopedic biomaterial, medical devices and pharmaceuticals. Presently, he is a founder, president and CEO of Avisa Pharma, a respiratory diagnostic company. Prior to Avisa, he was founder, chairman and CEO of Othera Pharmaceuticals, an ophthalmologic specialty-pharma company. Prior to Othera, David was President, CEO, and Chairman of Orthovita, (NASDAQ:VITA) an orthopedics biomaterials company. Prior to Orthovita, he co-founded two other medical device companies, Surgical Laser Technologies, Inc., which became a public company in the late 1980’s and Site Microsurgical Systems, an ophthalmic microsurgical company acquired by Johnson & Johnson. His earlier career included executive director positions in four hospitals beginning in 1966 including the Wills Eye Hospital, Philadelphia, PA. Past board appointments include: Animas Corporation, Morphotek Inc., TLC Vision (NASDAQ:TLCV), and Managed Healthcare Services, Inc. He received the 2005 Raymond Rafferty Entrepreneurial Excellence Award for the Greater Philadelphia Venture Group. He received his MBA in Healthcare Administration in 1966 from Xavier University.

Samuel Klein, MD
Board Member

Dr. Sam Klein, co-founder of Aspire, is the William H. Danforth Professor of Medicine, Director of the Center for Human Nutrition, Director of the Center for Applied Research Sciences, Chief of the Division of Geriatrics and Nutritional Sciences, and Medical Director of the Weight Management Program at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. Dr. Klein received an MD degree from Temple University Medical School in 1979 and an MS degree in Nutritional Biochemistry and Metabolism from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984. He completed residency training in Internal Medicine and a Clinical Nutrition fellowship at University Hospital in Boston, a National Institutes of Health Nutrition and Metabolism Research fellowship at Harvard Medical School, and a Gastroenterology fellowship at The Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. He is board certified in Internal Medicine, Gastroenterology, and Nutrition.

Dr. Klein is past-president of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity and the American Society for Clinical Nutrition, and initial chair of the Integrative Physiology of Obesity and Diabetes NIH study section. He was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation in 1996 and to the American Association of Physicians in 2008. Dr. Klein has had consistent R01 funding from the National Institutes of Health since 1990, and has published more than 300 papers in nutrition, metabolism, and obesity. He has received several awards for his research, including the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Miles and Shirley Fiterman Foundation Award in Nutrition, the AGA Masters Award for Outstanding Achievement in Basic or Clinical Research in Digestive Sciences, The Obesity Society TOPS Research Achievement Award and the Daniel P. Schuster Distinguished Investigator Award in Clinical and Translational Science from Washington University School of Medicine.

Thomas R. Morse
Board Member

Thomas R. Morse (Tom) is founder and principal of Liberty Venture Partners, a venture firm focused on early stage medical devices and healthcare IT. Prior to starting Liberty Venture Partners in 1997, Tom was a partner at Philadelphia Ventures, Inc. Tom acted as one of the lead venture investors, including serving on the Board of Directors, at Animas Corporation, a company founded and previously led by Kathy Crothall, Aspire’s CEO. Besides Animas, Tom has been involved in the financing and growth of over twenty other early stage medical device companies, including Nellcor, Acoustic Imaging Technologies Corporation, Ultracision, Coalescent Surgical, Adhezion BioMedical, Xanitos, and MEDecision.

Tom received his BS in Mechanical Engineering (with honors) from the United States Naval Academy and then served as a nuclear submarine officer before returning to graduate school and earning an MBA in finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a CFA charterholder.

Stephen Solomon, MD
Board Member

Stephen Solomon, MD, co-founder of Aspire Bariatrics, is the Chief of Interventional Radiology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. Previously he was a member of the Interventional Radiology Service at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Solomon has been actively involved with multiple medical device companies and venture capital for many years. He has been involved with start-up medical device companies such as Biosense, ProRhythm, and Althera. He was a board member of venture-backed Xoft. He is a venture partner with Cutlass Capital, a medical device venture firm.

Dr. Solomon obtained his BA from Harvard, his MD from Yale and did his medical residency training at Johns Hopkins.

David St. Clair
Board Member

David St. Clair (“David”) is the retired Founder & CEO of MEDecision, Inc, a company he started in 1988. The company became the leader in collaborative health care management systems, helping clinicians manage the quality and affordability of care for about 50 million people in the U.S. In 2008, MEDecision (NASDAQ "MEDE") was sold to one of its largest clients, Health Care Service Corp. (“HCSC”) in Chicago, which operates Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in Illinois, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. David and MEDecision have received numerous awards over the years, with the company most recently being named one of the best places to work in all of health care.

From 1985 to 1988, David was second in command of Gabrieli Medical Information Systems (GMIS) a company which developed and sold clinical software used in health claims payment processes nationwide. Prior to GMIS, David worked as a general management consultant with the Strategic Management Group within Hay Associates until 1985. David has a Bachelors in Applied Science from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Harvard University.