Leadership

Stan is an inventor and entrepreneur who serves on a number of healthcare and medical technology boards. He’s been founding CEO of four medical diagnostics and tools companies. Two of them have been among the most successful diagnostics startups of all time: Cytyc Corp., which he founded in 1987, revolutionized early detection of cervical cancer through its development of the modern Pap test. EXACT Sciences, which he founded in 1995, pioneered non-invasive early detection of colorectal cancer through its Cologuard test.

Stan holds 37 patents, primarily in methods for early detection of cancer. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering in 2014 for his work on the early detection of cancer.

Stan graduated from Cooper Union in New York City with a BS degree in electrical engineering.

Francis Cuss is a physician-scientist with broad experience in pharmaceutical research, clinical development, and executive management during a career spanning more than 30 years with BMS, Schering-Plough, and Glaxo.  Francis retired from BMS as Executive Vice President, Chief Scientific Officer and Head of R&D.  Francis has led highly productive discovery organizations which produced a pipeline of innovative medicines from in-house and external programs, helping numerous patients prevail against serious disease, and laying the foundation for significant company growth. He holds medical degrees from Cambridge University, U.K. and is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine. He is a member of the board of directors of Novo Holdings A/S, Denmark and Rubius Therapeutics, and Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees of Montclair State University, NJ.  He has published numerous articles and book chapters on topics of medical interest and organizational effectiveness.

Theresia Gouw is a founding partner at Acrew Capital. In 2014, she co-founded Aspect Ventures. Prior to Aspect, Theresia was a Managing General Partner at Accel. Theresia has been fortunate to work with many successful companies through IPOs or acquisitions including Forescout (FSCT), Imperva (IMPV), Trulia (TRLA), Hotel Tonight (Airbnb), Astro (Slack: WORK), LearnVest (Northwestern Mutual), Jasper Designs (CDNS) and Kosmix (WMT).

As an entrepreneur, Theresia was founding VP of Business Development and Sales at Release Software, a venture-backed company that provided SaaS to enable digital rights management and payment technologies for the software industry. Earlier, she worked at Bain & Company and as a product manager at Silicon Graphics.

Theresia led early investments in Cato Networks, Deserve, Exabeam, The Muse, Crew, ShieldX Networks, and PredictHQ.

Theresia is a first-generation immigrant and a passionate supporter of educational causes and increasing diversity in the tech industry. Theresia was named to Forbes’ 100 Most Powerful Women list, has been recognized 8 times on the Forbes Midas List, including 2019, was named one of the 40 most influential minds in tech by Time Magazine, as well as being named to the Carnegie Corporation’s annual Distinguished Immigrants list.

With a passion for working with exceptional scientists and creative business executives, Steve has built multiple companies with a focus on transforming and impacting patient care while creating exciting and rewarding professional opportunities for its employees, most recently as president and chief operating officer of Foundation Medicine, a pioneer in the field of comprehensive genomic testing in cancer.

Steve extends his medical technology expertise to several other ventures. He currently serves as the Executive Chairman for Thrive Earlier Detection, a biotechnology company that develops early detection tests for multiple types of cancer. Steve is also the Executive Chairman at the molecular technology company ArcherDX, Inc. which empowers physicians to apply high-quality genomics in daily clinical care.

Steve has held leadership roles with several pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies, including Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Aileron Therapeutics,  and Infinity Pharmaceuticals.

Robert Langer is one of 12 Institute Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); being an Institute Professor is the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member. He has written nearly 1,500 articles, which have been cited over 310,000 times; his h-index of 276 is the highest of any engineer in history and the 8th highest of any individual in history (behind Sigmund Freud and a few others). He has more than 1,350 issued and pending patents worldwide. His patents have licensed or sublicensed to over 400 companies. He served as Chairman of the FDA’s Science Board (its highest advisory board) from 1999-2002. His over 220 awards include both the United States National Medal of Science and the United States National Medal of Technology and Innovation (he is one of 4 living individuals to have received both these honors), the Charles Stark Draper Prize (often called the Engineering Nobel Prize), Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, Albany Medical Center Prize, Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, Kyoto Prize, Wolf Prize for Chemistry, Millennium Technology Prize, Priestley Medal (highest award of the American Chemical Society), Gairdner Prize, Dreyfus Prize in Chemical Sciences, Maurice Marie-Janot Award, and the Lemelson-MIT prize, for being “one of history’s most prolific inventors in medicine.” He holds 34 honorary doctorates and has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Inventors.

Caroline is a biopharmaceutical executive with over 20 years of experience successfully leading diverse, empowered, and integrated teams. She has broad experience integrating science, business, and the clinic to deliver differentiated value to patients. Most recently, she was Vice President, Head R&D Strategy, and Planning at Bristol-Myers Squibb where she led portfolio strategy and operations. This included shaping BMS’s strategy and portfolio to deliver strong competitive positioning inmmune-oncology, immunoscience, fibrosis, and cardiovascular, together with a new fit-for-purpose operating model. Her earlier career spanned leadership roles in commercial, market access, regulatory, and drug development. An organic chemist by training, Caroline studied as an undergraduate and postgraduate at Imperial College, London.

Amy is a healthcare investor and Managing Partner at Polaris Partners and LSPIF.

She currently serves as executive chair of SQZ Biotech, as well as Lyndra Therapeutics, where she was co-founder and the company’s initial CEO. She also represents Polaris as a director of Cyclerion (NASDAQ: CYCN), Dewpoint Therapeutics, Kallyope, Volastra, Thirty Madison, and ByHeart. Amy joined Polaris in 2014, at which time she assumed the role of CEO of Arsia Therapeutics, a Polaris-backed company later acquired by Eagle Pharmaceuticals. She also co-founded the LS Polaris Innovation Fund which was formed in 2017.

Prior to joining Polaris, Schulman was the general counsel of Pfizer, president of Pfizer Nutrition, and was instrumental in its sale to Nestle for $11.85 billion in 2012. Soon after its sale, Schulman also became the president of Pfizer Consumer Healthcare.

Schulman has received numerous awards including Xconomy’s 2017 Newcomer Award, Scientific American’s 2015 Worldview 100 List, Fierce Biotech’s 2014 Top 15 Women in Biotech, and Fortune Magazine’s 2013 50 Most Powerful Women in Business. She is a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School and serves on the Board of Directors of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALNY) and Mount Sinai Hospital.

She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Wesleyan University and earned her J.D. from Yale Law School.

George Zachary established CRV’s Bioengineering practice in August of 2016. In addition to investing in Glympse, he has led the firm’s investments in PillPack, a full-service, technology-based pharmacy that was acquired by Amazon in 2018; Wild Type, a company who creates clean and sustainable fish and meat through cellular agriculture technologies; System1 Biosciences, a neurotherapeutics company that employs phenotypic screening to discover novel drugs for complex neurological and psychiatric diseases; Freenome, a company applying deep learning to cell-free DNA for early cancer detection; HealthIQ, a technology-based insurance company that uses artificial intelligence to provide the best rates for health-conscious individuals; Color Genomics; and Recursion Pharma. He was also the first and lead institutional investor in a number of the world’s most iconic companies including Twitter (TWTR), Yammer ($1B acquisition by MSFT), Shutterfly (SFLY), and Udacity.

George brings over 20 years of computing and consumer technology experience to his role as an investor, having previously been a general partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV), and leading the Nintendo 64 development business at Silicon Graphics. He earned a joint B.S. in Computer Science and Management Science from MIT and MIT Sloan School of Business, is on the board of StartX, and is also an advisor to the XPRIZE Foundation.