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Thomas B. Neff
Chairman, Founder, and Chief Executive Officer, FibroGen
Mr. Neff founded FibroGen, Inc., in 1993, and has served since that time as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and as a member of our Board of Directors. Prior to founding FibroGen, Mr. Neff was a founder and managing general partner of two investment partnerships that pioneered the use of royalty interests to fund clinical development and ultimately led to the formation of Royalty Pharma, a global leader in the acquisition of royalty interests. Earlier in his career, Mr. Neff was Senior Vice President at Lazard Frères & Co. and an investment banker at PaineWebber Group (now UBS). Mr. Neff is a member of the Board of Trustees at Claremont McKenna College, and serves as a Director of FibroGen China Anemia Holdings, Ltd., and General Manager of FibroGen (China) Medical Technology Development Co., Ltd. He was a fellow of the Thomas Watson Foundation, and completed his undergraduate studies at Claremont McKenna College, with concentrations in molecular biology and government, and pursued graduate studies at the University of Chicago in economics and finance. Mr. Neff received a Doctor of Medicine degree, honoris causa, from Oulu University, Oulu, Finland in 2009.
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Suzanne Blaug
Director
Suzanne Blaug has more than 30 years of strategic and commercial experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. She has successfully brought new drugs to market at the global, regional, and local country levels in multiple therapeutic areas including Oncology, Cardiovascular, Immunology, Nephrology, Infectious Diseases, Neurology, and Psychiatry. Ms. Blaug most recently served as Senior Vice President, Global Marketing and Commercial Development at Amgen Inc. from 2012 to 2018. From 2004 until 2012, she was at Johnson & Johnson, where she held several positions including Head of Janssen Alzheimer Immunotherapy, Vice President Strategic Marketing and New Business Development at Janssen Europe, and Area Managing Director – UK, Italy, and Greece. Ms. Blaug started her career at Bristol-Myers Squibb in 1983, where she held numerous marketing, strategic, and general management positions in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Ms. Blaug is currently a senior advisor at McKinsey & Company, and she serves on the Healthcare at Kellogg Advisory Council at Northwestern University, as well as the Center for the Business of Healthcare Corporate Advisory Board at the University of North Carolina. Ms. Blaug received her Bachelor of Science degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her Master of Business Administration from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
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Jeffrey L. Edwards
Director
Jeffrey L. Edwards was appointed to our board of directors in 2015 after retiring from Allergan Inc., which he joined in 1993 and where he served as Executive Vice President, Finance and Business Development, Chief Financial Officer from September 2005 to August 2014. From 2003 to 2005, Mr. Edwards served as Allergan’s Corporate Vice President, Corporate Development, and previously served as Senior Vice President, Treasury, Tax, and Investor Relations. Prior to joining Allergan, Mr. Edwards was with Banque Paribas and Security Pacific National Bank, where he held various senior-level positions in the credit and business development functions. Mr. Edwards currently serves on the board of directors and as Audit Committee Chairman of Viamet Pharmaceuticals Holdings, LLC, a privately owned biopharmaceutical company. Mr. Edwards received a B.A. in Sociology from Muhlenberg College and completed the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School.
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Jeffrey W. Henderson
Director
Jeffrey W. Henderson has served on our board of directors since August 2015. Mr. Henderson has nearly 30 years of financial, commercial, and pharmaceutical industry experience. Most recently he served as Chief Financial Officer for Cardinal Health Inc. from 2005 until 2014. His many responsibilities at Cardinal Health included commercial operations in China. Prior to Cardinal Health, Mr. Henderson was President and General Manager of Eli Lilly Canada Inc. and Vice President and Corporate Controller of Eli Lilly & Company. He joined Eli Lilly in 1998 as Vice President and Corporate Treasurer. His prior experience includes 10 years at General Motors, where he served in executive and managerial posts in Great Britain, Singapore, New York, and Canada. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Kettering University, Flint, Michigan, and his M.B.A. from Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. Mr. Henderson is a native of St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. He is a director of Qualcomm Incorporated, Halozyme Therapeutics Inc., Integrated DNA Technologies Inc., and Affordable Care Inc. He is also an Advisory Director at the private equity firm of Berkshire Partners, LLC.
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Maykin Ho, Ph.D.
Director
Dr. Maykin Ho joined the board of directors in December 2018. Dr. Ho has more than 30 years of experience in the healthcare and finance industries. She serves on the boards of directors for Agios Pharmaceuticals, Parexel International Corporation, the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, and the Institute for Protein Innovation. Dr. Ho is also a venture partner of Qiming Venture Partners and a member of the Biotech Advisory Panel of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong. She is a retired partner of the Goldman Sachs Group where she served as senior biotechnology analyst, co-head of healthcare for global investment research and advisory director for healthcare investment banking. Prior to Goldman Sachs, Dr. Ho held various managerial positions in licensing, strategic planning, marketing and research at DuPont-Merck Pharmaceuticals and DuPont de Nemours & Company. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School and a graduate of the Advanced Management Program at The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. Dr. Ho received a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology and a B.S. from the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center.
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Thomas F. Kearns Jr.
Director
Thomas F. Kearns Jr. has served on our board of directors since November 1996. Mr. Kearns is a retired Partner of The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc., where he was an investment banker in the healthcare area from 1974 until 1987. Prior to his career at Bear Stearns, Mr. Kearns worked for Merrill Lynch from January 1959 until August 1969. Mr. Kearns is Chairman of the National Advisory Board of Carolina Performing Arts at the University of North Carolina. In 2013, he joined the board of directors of Franklin Street Partners. Mr. Kearns was a Trustee of the University of North Carolina Foundation and Endowment Fund for 16 years and served on the board of directors of Biomet Inc. from January 1980 until May 2005. He received his B.A. in History from the University of North Carolina.
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Kalevi Kurkijärvi, Ph.D.
Director
Kalevi Kurkijärvi, Ph.D., has served on our board of directors since November 1996. He has also served on the board of directors of our subsidiary, FibroGen Europe Oy, since November 1997. Since March 2010, Dr. Kurkijärvi has been the Chairman and Founding Partner of Innomedica Oy, a business development company specialized in licensing, distributor search, and strategic planning for companies in the pharmaceutical and medtech industries, and from August 1997 to February 2010 he acted as Director, with financial matters as his main responsibility. He was also the Founding Partner and former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Bio Fund Management, a Finnish-Danish venture capital company, from 1997 until 2010. He has also been Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of his family’s import-export trading company, Biketex Ltd., since October 1993. Dr. Kurkijärvi has over twenty years of experience in international life science business and over ten years in corporate finance. He currently serves on the boards of directors of Innomedica Oy (chair), Biketex Ltd. (chair), and Hytest Oy (chair). He previously served on the boards of directors at other biotechnology companies such as Paratek Pharmaceuticals Inc., Ark Therapeutics Plc, BioTie Therapies Plc (chair), Stick Tech Oy (chair), Hormos Medical Oy (chair), Map Medical Oy (chair), Bio Orbit Oy (chair), and Juvantia Pharma Oy, among others. Prior to founding Bio Fund, Dr. Kurkijärvi worked as Executive Director of the venture capital group at the Finnish National Fund of Research and Development (SITRA). He has also served as Executive Vice President at Wallac Oy and as President and Chief Executive Officer of Pharmacia Diagnostics Production Oy. Dr. Kurkijärvi received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Turku in 1992, where he also worked for several years in research and teaching.
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Gerald Lema
Director
Gerald Lema was appointed to the board of directors in September 2017. Mr. Lema has more than 27 years of pharmaceutical, diagnostics, healthcare, and consumer experience in Asia, Europe/Middle East and Africa, U.S., and Latin America. He currently serves as Partner and Representative Director of Cylon Capital, a private investment group based in Tokyo that creates value for brands and technologies in the Japanese and Asia Pacific markets. Prior to Cylon Capital, Mr. Lema served as President of Asia Pacific at Baxter International from 2005 until 2015. He has also served as President, Japan at Baxter International since April 2007. Before Baxter, Mr. Lema worked for 18 years at Abbott Laboratories where he held several positions of increasing responsibility in general management, strategy and business development. His last position with Abbott was Corporate Vice President, Asia Pacific and Chairman, Abbott Japan, in Tokyo. Mr. Lema currently serves as a Director of Catalyst. He is co-author of Foreign Investment through Debt-Equity Swaps, and published in the MIT Sloan Management Review. Mr. Lema is a graduate of the Stanford University Executive Program, earned a Master of Business Administration from the Freeman School of Business at Tulane University, and has a Bachelor of Science, Engineering from Universidad del Valle, Colombia.
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Rory B. Riggs
Director
Mr. Riggs has served on our board of directors since October 1993. Mr. Riggs is a co-founder and Chairman of the investment committee of Royalty Pharma, an investment company focused on drug royalties; and founder and Chief Executive Officer of Locus Analytics, LLC, and of Syntax, LLC, development-stage ventures focused on creating a new information technology platform for business and large-scale portfolio management. Mr. Riggs has served as President and a director of Biomatrix, Inc. (acquired by Genzyme Corp.); Chief Executive Officer of RF&P Corporation, an investment company owned by the State of Virginia Retirement System; and a managing director in PaineWebber’s mergers and acquisitions department. Mr. Riggs currently serves as Managing Member of New Ventures, a venture fund focused on healthcare; and on the boards of Intra-Cellular Therapies (publicly-traded); GeneNews (publicly-traded); eReceivables (private); and Nuredis (private); and as Chairman of the board and a director of Cibus, LLC (private). Mr. Riggs graduated from Middlebury College and holds an MBA from Columbia University.
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Roberto Pedro Rosenkranz, Ph.D., M.B.A.
Director
Roberto Pedro Rosenkranz, Ph.D., M.B.A. has served on our board of directors since April 2010. Dr. Rosenkranz was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ROXRO PHARMA Inc., a pharmaceutical company, from October 1999 to December 2010. Since 2012, he has been executive chairman of Altos Therapeutics LLC, a pharmaceutical company. Dr. Rosenkranz is also on the board of directors of Pherin Pharmaceuticals Inc., a pharmaceutical company, and the Ronald and Ann Williams Charitable Foundation. Prior to assuming his leadership role at ROXRO, Dr. Rosenkranz was President and Chief Operating Officer of Scios Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, from 1996 to 1997. From 1995 to 1996, he occupied multiple research, development, and marketing positions at Roche Laboratories, a pharmaceutical company. From 1982 to 1996, Dr. Rosenkranz occupied multiple research, development, and marketing positions at Syntex Laboratories Inc., a pharmaceutical company. Dr. Rosenkranz previously sat on the boards of Medcenter Solutions do Brasil SA and Gemini Genomics Limited (also referred to as Gemini Genomics Plc). Dr. Rosenkranz received a B.A. in Psychology from Stanford University, a Ph.D. in Pharmacology and Toxicology from U.C. Davis, and an M.B.A. from Santa Clara University.
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James A. Schoeneck
Director
James A. Schoeneck has served on our board of directors since April 2010. Mr. Schoeneck was former Chief Executive Officer at Depomed, Inc., which he joined in 2007. From 2005-2007 he was Chief Executive Officer of BrainCells Inc., a privately-held biopharmaceutical company. Prior to joining BrainCells Inc. he served as Chief Executive Officer of ActivX BioSciences, a development-stage biotechnology company. Mr. Schoeneck’s pharmaceutical experience also includes three years as President and Chief Executive Officer of Prometheus Laboratories Inc., a pharmaceutical and diagnostics company. Prior to joining Prometheus, Mr. Schoeneck spent three years as Vice President and General Manager, Immunology, at Centocor Inc. (now Janssen Biotech, Inc.), a biotechnology company, where he led the development of Centocor’s commercial capabilities. His group launched Remicade®, which became one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical brands. Earlier in his career, he spent 13 years at Rhone-Poulenc Rorer Inc. (now Sanofi), a pharmaceutical company, serving in various sales and marketing positions of increasing responsibility. Mr. Schoeneck holds a B.S. in Education from Jacksonville State University.
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Toshinari Tamura, Ph.D.
Director
Toshinari Tamura, Ph.D. has served on our board of directors since September 2008. He previously worked at Yamanouchi Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., starting in 1972 and ultimately becoming Executive Corporate Officer and Representative Director. Following the merger with Astellas Pharma Inc., he was named Executive Vice President and Chief Science Officer of Astellas and served in those roles and on the board of directors from April 2005 until June 2008. Dr. Tamura was in charge of research and development of FibroGen’s PHI anemia program in 2004 and has remained familiar with the science of the program since then. Dr. Tamura served as director of the board of KinoPharma Inc., a drug development company, from September 2008 to March 2010. Dr. Tamura served as director of the board of IMMD Inc., a drug development company, from October 2010 to November 2012. Dr. Tamura served as an advisor to Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories Ltd., a drug development company, from September 2008 to August 2015. Dr. Tamura served as an advisor to Japan Science and Technology Agency, a government-sponsored organization promoting science and technology, from September 2012 to March 2015. Dr. Tamura is currently advisor to Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, a government-sponsored private equity firm (from February 2010), and Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development, a government-sponsored organization to promote integrated medical R&D (from April 2015). Dr. Tamura holds a Bachelor’s degree in Pharmaceutical Science from Chiba University, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Organic Chemistry from the University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences.