Board of Directors

Richard Benkendorf - Co-founder and Managing Principal, Technology Impact Partners

Mr. Benkendorf spent many years at IBM Corporation where he served in a number of senior executive positions all over the U.S. After IBM, he was head of M&A and strategic investments at Ameritech Corporation in Chicago. As a principal in both T.I.P. and Concentric Partners, Mr. Benkendorf has managed over $125MM in venture capital investments throughout the country.

Nevan Elam - Former Head of Nektar Pulmonary

Mr. Elam is a former member of the executive management team of Nektar Therapeutics where he served as senior vice president, head of the pulmonary business unit. In this role, he oversaw all pulmonary business including research and development, manufacturing and strategic partnerships. Most recently Mr. Elam was responsible for the sale of Nektar’s pulmonary business to Novartis for $115 million on Dec. 31, 2008.

Richard J Hawkins - Chairman & CEO at id2 Innovations in Drug Development

In 1983 Mr. Hawkins founded Pharmaco and as Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, he guided the growth of that organization to over 700 employees. It eventually became PPD Pharmaco, one of the largest clinical contract research organizations in the world. Since Pharmco, he has served in various capacities in numerous startup companies, including Sensus Drug Development Corporation which was sold to Pfizer, Covance Biotechnology Services which was sold to Akzo Nobel Inc. in early 2001 and LoopOne, Inc. which was sold to Neopost in May 2001. He currently serves as a Board of Director for SciClone Pharmaceuticals Inc and on the board for Cytori Therapeutics, Inc. He co-founded and acted as CEO, President and Chairman of Austin based LabNow.

Rob Neville - CEO Savara