Shockwave Medical has recently acquired Neovasc

We’re committed to driving value for physicians and improving the lives of an underserved patient population.

A LEADER IN CARDIOVASCULAR INNOVATION

Neovasc is a leader in the development of minimally invasive therapies for two of the most vexing challenges in cardiovascular care: refractory angina and mitral valve regurgitation.

The company is committed to clinical rigor and collaborates with researchers and clinicians in Canada, the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. Our products, the Reducer™ and Tiara™ systems, represent the forefront of innovation in treating advanced heart disease.

Reducer is CE-marked for use in the EU and is FDA approved for investigational use in the US. Tiara is not commercially available and is currently being evaluated in two ongoing clinical trials.

Headquartered in Vancouver, BC and Minneapolis, MN, Neovasc is publicly traded on both the NASDAQ and the Toronto Stock Exchange (NVCN).

Neovasc Business Certifications >

BRITISH COLUMBIA
13700 Mayfield Place #2135
Richmond BC V6V 2E4
1-855-802-5180
email >

MINNESOTA
900 Long Lake Road
Suite 300
New Brighton, MN 55112
email >

LEADERSHIP AND GUIDANCE

KEY MANAGEMENT BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Fred Colen

President and Chief Executive Officer

Bill Little

Chief Operating Officer

Christopher Clark

Chief Financial Officer

Lisa Becker

Vice President, Regulatory Affairs
Global Angina Therapies

Sarah Gallagher

Vice President of Clinical Affairs

John Panton

Chief Quality Officer

Prof. Shmuel Banai

MD, Medical Director

Fred Colen

President and Chief Executive Officer

Fred Colen is a seasoned business executive with years of experience leading small, medium and large medical device businesses throughout the world. Fred has been a successful business innovator in commercialization of new medical technology products. He was President/CEO of BeneChill, a brain cooling company and President of the Boston Scientific Cardiac Rhythm Management Group. Additionally he served as Boston Scientific’s Chief Technology Officer for eight years. Born and raised in the Netherlands, Fred obtained a master's degree in Electrical Engineering with specialization in BioMedical Technology from the RWTH Aachen, Germany. He has served on several boards: Mölnlycke Healthcare, Middle Peak Medical and College of Science & Engineering at the University of Minnesota.

Bill Little

Chief Operating Officer

Bill has extensive leadership experience in both interventional cardiology and structural heart disease. Prior to joining Neovasc, he served on the leadership team at Abbott Vascular. During his tenure at Abbott, Bill worked as Divisional Vice President of Global Marketing, and Head of Customer and New Market Insights. He previously served as Vice President of Global Cardiovascular Therapies for St. Jude Medical and joined Abbott through the acquisition of the company. While at St. Jude Medical, Bill oversaw marketing and strategy for the structural heart and vascular portfolios. Prior to joining St. Jude Medical, he was Vice President, Global Marketing at Bard Peripheral Vascular and he spent 13 years at Boston Scientific in a variety of domestic and international sales and marketing roles focused primarily on cardiovascular interventions. Bill holds a B.S. in Business Administration and Marketing from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Christopher Clark

Chief Financial Officer

Chris has almost 20 years of finance and accounting experience in public practice and in public and private companies, most recently focused in the medical device sector. Previous experience includes financial leadership roles with large automotive and telecom firms in which he developed deep expertise in the development and management of sophisticated financial systems. A highly sought after consultant for biotechnology startups, Chris accepted the role of Chief Financial Officer at Neovasc and was instrumental in the initial and ongoing development of Neovasc as a publicly traded company. He received his designation as a Chartered Accountant from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales and articled with KPMG before moving to Canada from England in 1998. He has an honors degree in Economics from Swansea University and a post graduate diploma from Keble College, Oxford.

Lisa Becker

Vice President, Regulatory Affairs
Global Angina Therapies

Lisa has more than 20 years of experience in medical device regulatory affairs. Her product and therapy experience has spanned medical devices from cardiac rhythm management to vascular support, pulmonary artery pressure monitoring, cardiac occluders, heart valves and most recently, structural heart products. Lisa joined Neovasc to provide Regulatory leadership in Angina Therapies in July 2021, and brings deep regulatory experience in U.S. and international markets. Creative and collaborative regulatory strategies drive her regulatory approach with the best interest of patients always at the forefront. Lisa earned her Bachelor of Science in Organizational Behavior with a General Engineering minor from the United States Air Force Academy. She served nearly ten years on active duty in the US Air Force while obtaining her Master of Science as well. She considers her regulatory work as a continuation of her service to improving lives.

Sarah Gallagher

Vice President of Clinical Affairs

Sarah Gallagher joined Neovasc as the Vice President of Clinical Affairs in June of 2021, bringing with her 20 years of medical device clinical research experience. Prior to joining Neovasc, Sarah held leadership roles at Medtronic in Interventional Pain, Neuromodulation, and Cardiac Rhythm Management, and St. Jude Medical in Structural Heart. During her tenure she held roles with increasing responsibility in clinical research and clinical operations. She has developed and executed both pre and post-market clinical trials and supported regulatory approvals globally. Sarah holds a Bachelor of Applied Arts in Exercise Science, a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, from the University of Minnesota, and Master of Science in Technology Management from the University of St. Thomas.

John Panton

Chief Quality Officer

John Panton has over 30 years of engineering experience spread over the Total Product Life Cycle, in small, medium and large organizations and across different industrial sectors: medical devices, semiconductor, oil and gas, telecommunications, consumer electronics and military avionics. In England, John held various engineering roles of increasing responsibility specializing in new product introduction; in R&D, product and process design and development, manufacturing engineering, process engineering and product engineering. In 2005, John started his Canadian career as a Quality professional, as the Quality Assurance Manager of a start-up company serving semiconductor Fortune 500 customers. He then moved to a Class 2 reusable medical device company initially as Quality and Regulatory Manager and then later to Global Director of Quality Systems, where he had responsibility for sites in Canada, US, Europe and Australia. John joined Neovasc in May 2015 as Director of Quality Systems, moved to VP of Quality in November, 2017 and was named Chief Quality Officer in 2020. John holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Microelectronics Technology and Applications from Middlesex University, and a Higher National Diploma in Physics from Portsmouth Polytechnic.

Prof. Shmuel Banai

MD, Medical Director

One of Israel’s leading cardiologists and a productive researcher, Professor Shmuel Banai was Medical Director of Neovasc Medical Ltd., one of the predecessor companies to Neovasc Inc., where he now fulfills the role of Medical Director. Prof. Banai is the Director of the Division of Cardiology and the Head of Interventional Cardiology at the Tel Aviv Medical Center, Tel Aviv, Israel. He is a full academic Professor of Cardiology at the Tel Aviv University, Sackler School of Medicine, head of the Nicholas and Elizabeth Slezak Super Center for Cardiac Research and Biomedical Engineering, and the Walton Chair of Interventional Cardiology at the Tel Aviv University. His main research interests are vessel wall biology and physiology, myocardial microcirculation, atherosclerosis, vulnerable plaque, pharmacological treatment of restenosis, anti-thrombotic therapy, and device-based therapy for refractory angina. Professor Banai is the author of more than 200 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters and has participated in many clinical and pre-clinical research studies in the field of cardiology, interventional cardiology, and pharmacotherapy.

Steve Rubin, Chairman

Paul Geyer

Alexei Marko

Norman Radow

Douglas Janzen

Fred Colen

Steve Rubin, Chairman

Steve Rubin has served as Chairman of the Boards of Directors of Neovasc and B-Balloon since February 2008 and as a director of B-Balloon since November 2007. Since May 2007, Mr. Rubin has been the Executive Vice President, Administration, of OPKO Health, Inc., a specialty healthcare company that focuses on the commercialization and development of proprietary pharmaceuticals and instruments for the diagnosis and treatment of ophthalmologic disorders. Prior to that, from August 2001 to September 2006, Mr. Rubin served as the Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of IVAX Corporation, which was acquired by Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. in January 2006. Mr. Rubin is also a member of the Frost Group, LLC, a private investment firm based in Miami, Florida, and serves on the boards of directors of Dreams, Inc., a vertically-integrated sports products company, Modigene, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, Ideation Acquisition Corporation, a special purpose acquisition company formed for the purpose of acquiring businesses in digital media, Longfoot Communications Corp., a public shell company seeking to identify a merger or business combination candidate and Safestitch Medical, Inc., a medical device company. Mr. Rubin holds a B.A. in Economics from Tulane University and a J.D. from the University of Florida.

Paul Geyer

Paul Geyer graduated with a B.A.Sc. in electrical engineering from the University of British Columbia in 1988. In 1991, he founded Mitroflow International Inc., a medical device company that developed and commercialized bovine tissue heart valves. Under his leadership, Mitroflow grew from a start-up of nine employees to more than 125 employees in 1999, when the firm was sold to Sulzer Medical. It continues to be one of the largest medical device companies in the Vancouver area. Since June 2009, Geyer has been CEO of LightIntegra Technology Inc. which developed the ThromboLux technology used to determine platelet quality for blood transfusions. Since 2003, he is a member of the board of directors at Science World British Columbia, where he was the board’s chairman from 2007 to 2010. Geyer has established a scholarship endowment at UBC for the support of students in the newly established Biomedical Engineering program and is a director and active supporter of BC Social Venture Partners, an organization supporting families and youth at risk through social enterprises. He continues to be an angel investor in technology and life science companies and was awarded the British Columbia Angel Investor of the year.

Alexei Marko

Alexei Marko’s decades of experience in the medical device field spans product development, sales and marketing and executive management. Mr. Marko has held management positions with Neovasc’s predecessor companies since 1999 and assumed the role of chief executive officer in 2008 in conjunction with the company’s expansion and restructuring. He is a registered professional engineer, a listed inventor on issued and pending medical technology patents and has been instrumental in the development and approval of multiple medical device products. Mr. Marko completed a B.Sc. (Hons) degree at Queen’s University and a M.Sc. in electrical engineering at the University of British Columbia, specializing in medical device development.

Norman Radow

In addition to his duties as a Managing Partner at Strul, Norman Radow founded the RADCO Companies, an opportunistic real estate investment group specializing in the acquisition and repositioning of multifamily assets, in 1994. In 2006, RADCO became a nationally recognized workout company and then oversaw much of the Lehman bankruptcy estate residential portfolio from 2008 through 2010. Today, RADCO owns approximately 17,000 apartment units in 13 cities across 8 states with an asset value in excess of $2 billion, and has approximately 500 employees. In both 2017 and 2018, RADCO was named one of the fastest growing private companies in Atlanta by the Atlanta Business Chronicle, one of the fastest growing mid-market companies in the state of Georgia by the Association for Corporate Growth, and one of the fastest growing companies in the nation by Inc. 5000. In 2018, Norman was recognized as one of the Most Admired CEOs in the commercial real estate industry by the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Prior to founding RADCO, Mr. Radow practiced law. He was awarded a Juris Doctor by New York Law School in 1981 and currently serves on its board. Mr. Radow also received a Bachelor of Arts degree from SUNY Plattsburgh in 1978.

Douglas Janzen

Douglas Janzen has deep experience in the cardiovascular industry having served as the past President and CEO and Director of Cardiome Pharma Corp. (TSX: COM; NASDAQ: CRME), a company that develops drugs to treat or prevent cardiovascular diseases. Mr. Janzen previously served as the company’s President and Chief Business Officer, since March 2006, and prior to that as CFO. Mr. Janzen has served as a director on a number of public and private boards of therapeutic and device companies including Sentinelle Medical, ICo Therapeutics and Bradmer Pharmaceuticals. Mr. Janzen also serves as the Chairman of Life Sciences British Columbia and as a Director of Biotech Canada. Mr. Janzen also has extensive experience in corporate banking and financing within the biotechnology sector as an analyst and the Head of Research at Loewen Ondaatje McCutheon from 1997 to 2001 and then as Managing Director, Health Sciences and Partner at Sprott Securities Inc. (now Cormark) from 2001 to 2003.