Venture Partners, Executives-in-Residence and Advisors

William Pay

William joined Pappas Capital in 2023 as a Venture Partner. He is a Founding Managing Director for Asia for Bryan Garnier & Co. – a leading European boutique investment bank headquartered in Paris with 180+ bankers, where he specializes in advising mid cap high growth or disruptive companies. William is also an advisor to one of the largest privately held clinical CROs headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.

Before stepping into the investment world, William’s last corporate assignment was with Bayer Healthcare in the Far East as the Chief of Strategic Sourcing, where he was responsible for leading a cross category strategic sourcing and quality compliance team managing a volatile supply chain with half a billion euro spend per year. Prior to joining Bayer in July 2012, he held various globally-based strategic sourcing and business development / sales marketing positions of increasing responsibility at Takeda (Singapore), Johnson & Johnson (California) and Pfizer (NYC and Madrid) on the buy side, and for PPD (then part of the Carlyle Group and now part of Thermo Fisher) and Quintiles Transnational (today rebranded as IQVIA) on the supply side, operating out of Singapore, the US, Europe and China for the past 25+ years.

William is a member of the BayHelix Group, a non-profit professional organization of business leaders from investment and health-tech communities with a mission to shape the growth of the life science industry, foster and create business collaborations, and share information and career experience among its members.

William was educated in both China and the US. He is based in Wuxi near Shanghai, and speaks, reads and writes in both English and Mandarin Chinese.

Lisa Dreyer - October 20, 2022 - No Comments

Richard Staub

Richard joined Pappas Capital in 2022 as a Venture Partner and is currently the President of R&D Solutions at IQVIA. Supported by high-powered information and technology assets, the clinical experts in R&D Solutions leverage comprehensive evidence-driven trial design, accelerate site activation and patient recruitment, and optimize trial execution. Richard also serves as chair of the R&D Solutions Executive Committee. Prior to his role as President of IQVIA's R&D Solutions business unit, Richard was president of Novella Clinical, a specialty clinical research organization acquired by Quintiles in 2013, and the leader of QuintilesIMS’s Global Functional Resourcing business. Richard joined Novella in 2004 and served as president and CEO from 2008-2013. Under his leadership, Novella became a distinctively agile, results oriented CRO in the highly complex and fast-growing areas of specialty pharma and medical technology. Prior to Novella, Richard was senior vice president of global business development for one of the world’s largest CROs. His career in the pharmaceutical industry began at Zeneca Pharmaceuticals in 1989, where he was given increasing responsibilities as a medical and hospital sales representative, cardiovascular portfolio analyst and marketing manager.

Education:

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (BA in Economics)

Lisa Dreyer - October 11, 2022 - No Comments

Tina Wong-Russell

Tina is an Advisor to Pappas Capital and is also a consultant and executive coach to clients in both the public and private sectors. She brings a global perspective from years of working in Europe, Latin and North America, and especially Asia. Her consulting engagements have included strategies and programs in organizational development and talent management initiatives, such as leadership development, performance & talent management, succession planning and learning & development. Tina’s experience spans multiple industries and multinational organizations, with emphasis in life sciences and technology ranging from Fortune 500 companies to start-ups. She has also had multi-year consulting engagements with Federal Government Agencies, including Homeland Security and NASA. She is a board member of the National Association of Asian American Professionals (NAAAP) in Boston and is fluent in Chinese.

Education:

Boston University (MBA)
Illinois State University (BS in Communications)

Lisa Dreyer - September 16, 2021 - No Comments

Thyagi Thyagarajan

Thyagi is a Special Advisor to Pappas Capital. A 38-year veteran of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Thyagi is actively involved as an advisor/mentor to a Singapore-based med-tech start-up and a venture-funded healthcare company in India. He has been an independent non-executive director on boards of global companies such as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Varian Medical Systems, and the Murugappa Group of Companies, a leading family-owned conglomerate in South India.

Thyagi’s tenure with GSK included senior executive roles as Marketing Consultant in Spain and Europe, Marketing Director of Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe, and Managing Director of GSK India, culminating with his role as Regional Director and Senior Vice President of GSK Asia Pacific. In this capacity, he was a member of the International Management Team of GSK. Thyagi was also chairman of PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research Manufacturers of America) for Asia from 2005 to 2008, leading the industry’s advocacy with governments in the region. Before his retirement from GSK in 2008, Thyagi served on the Board of International Enterprise (I.E.) Singapore, a statutory board of the Government of Singapore responsible for promoting Singapore’s overseas trade, and as vice-chairman and non-executive director on the board of GlaxoSmithKline Ltd in India, a publicly listed company.

Having worked in both developed and emerging markets, Thyagi has a unique east-west perspective and an in-depth knowledge of Asia and Asian markets, combined with expertise in running significant business operations for a global corporation in Asia. Thyagi is fluent in Hindi and Tamil.

Education:

Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (MBA)
Indian Institute of Technology (BS in Electrical Engineering)

Lisa Dreyer - September 16, 2021 - No Comments

Victor Shi, PhD

Victor is a Special Advisor to Pappas Capital. He is also chairman of careLYFE and General Partner of venture capital firm Serica Partners. He previously served as CEO of Adicon Clinical Laboratories, a leading independent clinical laboratory in China, and President Asia Pacific of QIAGEN, a NASDAQ- and Frankfurt-listed leading company focused on in vitro diagnostics and life science research tools. Victor held senior positions at Aura Partners, Bridge Pharmaceuticals, Genospectra and Pappas Ventures. He was a faculty member at the National University of Singapore School of Medicine and a cancer research scientist at Merck & Co.

Victor is a Founding Director of BayHelix Group, a global association of Chinese life science business executives, and was elected Chairman from 2018 to 2019. He also serves on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange Biotech Advisory Committee.

Education:

University of Rochester (PhD)
University of Rochester (MS)
University of Science and Technology of China (BS)

Lisa Dreyer - September 16, 2021 - No Comments

Stanley Lau

Stanley is a Special Advisor to Pappas Capital. He is also CEO of TaiLai Biosciences, a Chinese biotechnology company providing a new generation of biopsy products and services based on its proprietary biomultiomics technology. With over 40 years of business and healthcare experience, Stanley has served in a variety of senior roles in China and internationally with organizations including MSD, Baxter, Schering-Plough, China Biologic Products, Amsino Medical Group. He currently serves as Non-Executive Chairman of the Board of Gland Pharma and as an independent director of Solasia Pharma K.K.

Education:

University of London (BPharm)

Lisa Dreyer - September 16, 2021 - No Comments

Miranda Gottlieb

Miranda is a Venture Partner at Pappas Capital. She previously served as the SVP of Marketing for Curative, a leading COVID-19 testing and vaccine delivery start-up in the United States. Miranda led the organization’s product marketing and strategic communications serving 35 million patients and 7,000 employees in 40 states.

Miranda began her career with the State of Florida’s Office of Substance Abuse and Mental Health focusing on public health communication and prevention. She attended graduate studies at Tsinghua University as a Schwarzman Scholar in Beijing, China. Following graduation, Miranda joined Johnson & Johnson’s enterprise government affairs team where she specialized in Chinese health policy. She later led Johnson & Johnson JLABS @ Shanghai's innovation activation team, a start-up incubator 50+ portfolio companies across the Asia Pacific region.

Education:

University of Tennessee (BA in Political Science and Hispanic Studies)
Tsinghua University, Beijing (MA in Global Affairs)

Lisa Dreyer - September 16, 2021 - No Comments

Patrick Daly

Patrick joined Pappas Capital in 2019 as an Executive-in-Residence. He is a seasoned global executive with a proven track record of entrepreneurship, building winning cultures and growing companies small and large. He has a unique ability to create, shape and implement strategic agendas, and motivate diverse teams to achieve results beyond what was expected. Prior to joining Pappas Capital, Patrick founded Cohera Medical, Inc. and shepherded it through commercialization while successfully raising multiple rounds of financing, including from KKR. The company was previously named the Pittsburgh Technology Counsel Company of the Year and Patrick was honored as CEO of the Year. He was also a three-time Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist.

Patrick is now the Global Vice President and GM for IQVIA MedTech and is developing and growing the burgeoning MedTech practice. He was recently the Chairman of the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed) Accel Board, the division within AdvaMed dedicated to the needs of smaller medical technology manufacturers. He enjoyed a successful tenure on the Executive Board of AdvaMed and has nurtured and developed strong relationships with the Fortune 500 Med Tech CEOs. Earlier in his career, Patrick spent over 15 years at Johnson & Johnson (J&J) in a variety of cross-functional and international assignments in the U.S. and Asia Pacific. His work using six-sigma to improve the Key Opinion Leaders experience garnered the J&J Corporate Standards of Leadership Award. He has frequently been invited to speak on entrepreneurship and company development at the MBA programs at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh Heinz School of Business.

Patrick has a passion and commitment to America’s military. Along with his classmates from West Point, he founded and is on the Executive Board of The Johnny Mac Soldiers Fund, which has raised over $32 million in college scholarships for Gold Star children.

Education:

United States Military Academy at West Point (BS in Foreign Area Studies)

Lisa Dreyer - July 6, 2020 - No Comments

Karen LeVert

Karen is leading the expansion of the firm’s Specialized Fund Management business with a focus on identifying attractive agricultural technology investment opportunities. She has a proven track record of progressing early-stage technologies from university research labs to commercialization as co-founder and CEO of two innovation labs, Southeast TechInventures, Inc. and Ag TechInventures, LLC. Karen’s business experience encompasses both corporate and entrepreneurial worlds with successful leadership experience in executive management, start-ups, and technology commercialization. Karen started her career at Nationwide Insurance Company holding positions of increasing responsibility from programmer to controller to managing a 500-person Property & Casualty service center. Before founding the innovation labs, her first entrepreneurial venture was launching a franchise bioremediation company that she later sold. Her next entrepreneurial venture was co-founding a Silicon Valley based software company.

Karen is the recipient of multiple awards including the Council for Entrepreneurial Development’s Outstanding Service Award, induction into the WRAL TechWire Hall of Fame, and the 2022 Women in Agribusiness (WIA) Demeter Award of Excellence. Along with her professional duties Karen serves as a board member for the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, the North Carolina Arboretum, AgLaunch, and North Carolina State University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Education:

University of Dayton (MBA)
Eastern Michigan University (BBA Information Technology)

Lisa Dreyer - January 16, 2020 - No Comments

Peter Young

Peter is an experienced life science industry executive and leads the firm’s initiatives in translational medicine. He is the Program Manager for the Wake Forest Technology Development Program, and provides business development and due diligence support to the firm's venture funds and portfolio companies. Peter joined Pappas Capital in 2012, serving initially as an Executive-in-Residence and currently as a Senior Venture Partner.

Peter has 40 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, spanning all areas of the business from sales representative to country-level general manager and CEO, for companies ranging from multinationals like Abbott and Glaxo to start-up biotechnology companies. As Vice President and Therapy Area Head at Glaxo Wellcome in the mid-1990s, he led the global introduction of combination HIV therapy that revolutionized HIV treatment and quintupled Glaxo’s global HIV portfolio sales, while keying industry leadership on global treatment access. Peter has since served as CEO of two private start-up enterprises, a viral vector vaccine company that raised over $80 million in NIH HIV and biodefense vaccine grants, and a specialty pharmaceutical company he led to an exit via a strategic transaction.

Peter currently serves as a director for Veralox Therapeutics, as an observer for Ribometrix, on the Oversight Committee for the University of Miami Wallace H. Coulter Center for Translational Research, and on the advisory board for New York State’s Empire Discovery Institute. He is also a member of the Long Island Bioscience Hub External Review Board, an Executive-in-Residence at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, an Executive-in-Residence at the Stony Brook University Center for Biotechnology, and a Mentor-in-Residence at Rutgers University. Peter is a past member of the BIO board, past Chairman of the North Carolina Biosciences Organization (NCBIO), and was a director of Memory Pharmaceuticals from 2004 until its sale to Roche in 2009. He has lived and worked in the US, Greece, the Middle East, Puerto Rico, New Zealand and London.

Education:

Indiana University (BA, History)
IU Kelley School of Business (MBA)

Lisa Dreyer - June 13, 2013 - No Comments