Executive Team | Board of Directors | Advisory Board

Juliet Tammenoms Bakker

Juliet Tammenoms Bakker is a founder and Managing Director of Longitude Capital. She focuses on investments in medical devices. Most recently, Ms. Tammenoms Bakker was a Managing Director of Pequot Ventures where she founded the life sciences investment practice in 1997. Prior to Pequot, she was Director, Strategic Planning and Director, Operations of Waste Management International, Inc. Ms. Tammenoms Bakker began her life sciences industry career over 20 years ago as an investment banker at PaineWebber. She currently serves on the boards of Ablation Frontiers, Acufocus, Aptus Endosystems, Facet Solutions, Paracor Medical, Sadra Medical and Sanarus Medical. Ms. Tammenoms Bakker holds an M.P.A. from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a B.S. in Biological Sciences from Cornell University.

Ronald Blum

Ronald Blum, O.D., Chairman, is President and Chief Executive Officer of PixelOptics. He has had great success in building diverse management teams needed to develop products as well as executing business strategies. He is a visionary, innovator and businessman.

Dr. Blum is named as the inventor on over 150 patents and patent applications. He has been on the editorial advisory boards of two national vision care industry publications.

Dr. Blum has also had substantial commercial innovation success, including Innotech which, was sold in 1997 to Johnson and Johnson. Innotech was founded by Dr. Blum in 1990, and under his direction as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer was taken public on the NASDAQ exchange in 1996 before being sold in 1997.

Dr. Blum remained with Johnson & Johnson until March 1999 serving as General Manager of Advanced Technologies for the Spectacle Lens Group of Johnson & Johnson, where he lead and managed the team that invented and developed the Definity (Progressive Addition Lens).

The Definity Lens was acquired in 2005 by Essilor (the largest lens manufacturer in the world). Prior to founding Innotech, Inc., Dr. Blum founded in 1977, Drs. Blum, Newman, Blackstock & Associates, Optometrists, P.C. By the time of Dr. Blum's departure in 1992, Drs. Blum, Newman, Blackstock & Associates, Optometrists, P.C., had grown to be one of the largest multi-location private professional optometric practices in the Southeastern United States.

In 1999 Dr. Blum was presented by the Mayor of Roanoke, Virginia a Key to the City, as well as, by the Governor of Virginia honorary shares in the original trading company of Jamestown, Virginia founded in 1607. Dr. Blum recently served on the Board of Trustees for Roanoke College. Dr. Blum received his Doctorate of Optometry degree from the Southern College of Optometry.

James J. Bochnowski

James J. Bochnowski is General Partners of Delphi Ventures, which he founded in 1988. His focus is on biotechnology, medical devices and diagnostics. Mr. Bochnowski began investing in medical companies in 1981 after co-founding Technology Venture Investors (TVI), a private venture capital partnership.

Since 1984, he has focused exclusively on healthcare investments. From 1976 to 1980, Jim was with Shugart Associates, a venture-backed disk drive company. As President and CEO, he led Shugart to increasing profitability, with annual revenues growing from $13 million to $200 million. Shugart was acquired by Xerox in 1979. From 1972 to 1976,

Mr. Bochnowski was a general partner with Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette's (DLJ) venture capital arm, the Sprout Capital Group. Prior to that, he served as a securities analyst with DLJ.

Mr. Bochnowski earned his M.B.A., with Distinction, from Harvard University in 1969 and B.S. in aerospace engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Trained as an aerospace engineer, Mr. Bochnowski worked as a missile systems engineer with the U.S. Army Missile Intelligence Directorate before entering Harvard University. Mr. Bochnowski has served as a director of the Western Association of Venture Capital.

Gary J. Kurtzman, MD

Gary Kurtzman is Managing Director in the Life Sciences Group at Safeguard Scientifics (NYSE: SFE). Dr. Kurtzman brings more than 25 years of experience in operations and investments, leveraging his medical expertise to enable businesses to enhance their products and grow their services, as well as to discover new partnering potential in developing entrepreneurial companies. Dr. Kurtzman is a member of the board for Safeguard’s partner companies Alverix, Good Start Genetics, NuPathe (Nasdaq: PATH), PixelOptics and Tengion (Nasdaq: TNGN).

Dr. Kurtzman joined Safeguard in 2006 from BioAdvance where he served as Managing Director and COO. Previously, he was CEO at Pluvita Corporation; COO at Genovo; Vice President, R&D at Avigen; and Virology Group Leader at Gilead Sciences, at the time a pre-IPO biotech company.

A board-certified internist from Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, MO, with a hematology sub-specialty from Stanford, Dr. Kurtzman has authored more than 40 research articles, book chapters and reviews, and is credited as inventor on twelve issued United States patents. He received his B.S from Stanford University and M.D. from Washington University.

Presently, Dr. Kurtzman is a lecturer in the Health Care Management Department at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania where he teaches healthcare entrepreneurship.

Michael B. Packard

Michael B. Packard is currently President and C.E.O. of High Performance Optics, Inc. and HPO Ophthalmics, Inc.

Mr. Packard recently served as interim-Chief Executive Officer of Optical Dynamics Corporation in Louisville, Kentucky. In late 1999, Mr. Packard created his own firm, TransCat Consulting, helping organizations "make change that matters." Mr. Packard focuses on maintaining ongoing consulting relationships with several private sector companies and public school districts, concentrating on leadership development and strategic planning, but offering a wide range of organizational and functional experiences.

From 1989 - 1999, Mr. Packard's role as Executive VP and Chief Administrative Officer at LensCrafters was key to creating the most successful optical retailer in the world and one of the most successful overall U.S. retailers. In addition to his roles at LensCrafters (1987 - 1999) and Procter & Gamble (1971 - 1987), Mr. Packard was the key outside director on the Board of Innotech, Inc., a high-tech optical equipment company from 1992-97. His involvement included the "garage" R&D stage, a successful IPO, and ultimately the purchase of the Company byJohnson & Johnson.

He presently serves on the Boards of several high-tech product development companies. He also plays an active role and serves on the Board of Trustees for the Economics Center for Education and Research, part of the University of Cincinnati.

Mr. Packard has a Chemical Engineering Degree (Bucknell 1970) and an MBA (Virginia 1972) concentrating on organizational behavior and leadership. Continued education includes the Change Leadership Program (Wharton) and the Retail Executive Program (Harvard). Mr. Packard developed and facilitates unique workshops in areas such as Conflict Management, Writing to Get What You Want, Strategic Planning, Priority Setting and Action Execution, and Leadership Development.

Ryan M. Schwarz

Ryan M. Schwarz is a Managing Director of the Carlyle Group focused on U.S. venture and growth capital opportunities in the healthcare sector.

Mr. Schwarz leads the healthcare investing practice in the U.S. Venture & Growth Capital Group with a particular focus on medical devices, medical technology and healthcare information technology. He is based in Washington, DC.

Mr. Schwarz previously served as a Vice President in the healthcare group at Robertson Stephens & Co. He was also an investment banker at Morgan Stanley & Co. Inc. Mr. Schwarz received his J.D., magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and his M.B.A. with Distinction from Harvard Business School.

He also received his A.B., magna cum laude from Duke University where he was elected Phi Beta Kappa and was an Angier B. Duke Scholar. Mr. Schwarz is on the Board of Directors of AcuFocus, Inc., Endius, Inc., Fairchild Imaging, Inc., InteliStaf Group, Inc., Liposonix, Inc., NeoVista, Inc., Primary Health, Inc., Proteus Biomedical, Inc., Sight Resource Corporation and Transport Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

He was formerly a Director of ConnectiCare Holdings, Inc. (sold to Health Insurance Plan of Greater New York), and Heritage Health Systems, Inc. (sold to Universal American Financial Corp.). Mr. Schwarz also serves on the Boards of certain charitable not-for-profit organizations in the Washington, DC area.

Stephen T. Zarrilli

Steve Zarrilli is the SVP and Chief Financial Officer at Safeguard Scientifics (NYSE: SFE). Mr. Zarrilli leverages 30 years of strategic, financial and operational experience in raising capital, managing diverse organizations and developing innovative financial and corporate strategies.

Prior to joining Safeguard in 2008, Mr. Zarrilli launched the Penn Valley Group, a  private equity and consulting organization serving middle market enterprises in strategy assessment , capital development and operational management.

Mr. Zarrilli also previously served as CFO then CEO of publicly traded US Interactive (1994 -2000), CEO of privately held Concellera Software (2000 - 2001) and CFO of venture- backed Fiberlink Communications (2001 - 2004). Mr. Zarrilli started his career at Deloitte & Touche.

In addition to his board responsibilities at PixelOptics, Mr. Zarrilli is a director and the Chairman of the Audit Committee of Nutrisystem, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTRI) and a director of venture-backed Cadient, Inc.  He also serves on a variety of non-profit boards, and is a frequent speaker on topics involving entrepreneurship and corporate governance.

Mr. Zarrilli is a graduate of La Salle University with a B.A. in Accounting and is a former Certified Public Accountant.  He also completed the Advanced Management Program at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.