Leadership

For more than 30 years, Mr. Gibson has held various executive positions in medical start-up companies and technology turnaround situations. Before becoming Chairman and CEO of Venclose, Mr. Gibson served as Chairman and CEO of Sprout Medical, a company developing a novel technology to improve the clinical efficiency of administrating rapid infusions in the ED, OR, ICU and prehospital environments. Previously, he was CEO or held other executive or Board of Director positions at Nervive, VenX Medical LLC, CorTechs Labs and Critical Perfusion. Before joining the medical device start-up environment, Mr. Gibson spent 15 years with Siemens Medical Solutions in multiple executive positions. He began his business career with Xerox Corporation. Mr. Gibson served as Vice Chairman of the External Advisory Board of the University of California/National Science Foundation Center for Biophotonics Science and Technology and currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Master of Healthcare Innovation program at Ohio State University. Mr. Gibson earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of Memphis.

Peter Osborne joined Venclose in 2017 as Chief Financial Officer. Prior to joining Venclose, Mr. Osborne was an independent financial executive consultant serving life science and technology companies. He served as the Chief Financial Officer for MyoScience Inc. (pain management and esthetics), SentreHEART Inc. (structural heart), Hansen Medical Inc. (structural heart) and VNUS Medical Technologies Inc. (superficial vein reflux; acquired by Covidien). Mr. Osborne began his career with Deloitte & Touche LLP where he was an audit partner in their Technology Practice. Mr. Osborne currently serves on the Board of Directors for two companies. He is a CPA and CGMA and holds both a Bachelor of Science in Operations Research degree and Bachelor of Commerce in Finance and Statistics degree from the University of Cape Town (Cape Town, South Africa). He also completed the Stanford University Executive Institute Program sponsored by the American Electronics Association.

As Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Turner is responsible for managing the daily activities of Venclose and leading its business planning and execution efforts. He brings a unique breadth and depth of experience building and leading lean, scalable teams and has spent the last 15 years with medical technology start-ups in the vascular space. Mr. Turner has held various operational and commercial leadership roles, including playing an instrumental role in the growth and success of Access Closure, which was acquired by Cardinal Health in 2014. Mr. Turner holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance degree from San Jose State University..

Gary McCord brings nearly 30 years of sales, marketing, and management experience in the medical device industry. Prior to joining Venclose in 2017, he was part of the executive team at TriReme Medical, a California-based subsidiary of QT Vascular, which develops and manufactures therapies for complex vascular disease. Prior, he was Vice President of Business Development at Sapheon (acquired by Covidien, now part of Medtronic), a developer of closure systems for treatment of venous reflux disease. Before joining Sapheon, Mr. McCord was Director of Coronary Franchise at Cardiovascular Systems, Inc. Earlier in his career, Mr. McCord held various sales and management positions with Fox Hollow Technologies, Pilot Cardiovascular Systems, Heart Technologies, Ventritex, Interventional Technologies, and X-Technologies—all privately held, entrepreneurial cardiology enterprises later acquired by companies such as C.R. Bard, Boston Scientific, Guidant, and St. Jude Medical. Mr. McCord holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications degree from the University of Missouri, Columbia.

James Abrams brings over 15 years of experience in manufacturing engineering and operations management with specific expertise in medical device design and product lifecycle management. Prior to Venclose, Mr. Abrams held positions with increasing responsibility at start-up and industry-leading companies including VNUS Medical (acquired by Covidien, now part of Medtronic), Miramar Labs (acquired by Sientra), Abbott and Covidien (acquired by Medtronic). Mr. Abrams brings a data driven, lean manufacturing discipline to drive solutions within Venclose and its onshore and offshore contract manufacturing arms. Mr. Abrams holds a Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from San Jose State University.

Dieter Bielang brings over 35 years of experience in the medical device industry, with over 20 years spent working in early-stage companies. Throughout his career, Mr. Bielang has held sales management and marketing positions in various therapeutic areas such as urology (CR Bard), anesthesia (Rusch-Teleflex), gynecology (Influence), orthopedics (Disc-O-Tech), neuroradiology (EndoVasix), and over the last 15 years in phlebology/vascular (VNUS, Covidien, and Sapheon). At VNUS, Mr. Bielang was responsible for launching and establishing a dominant market position for the VNUS RF Closure System in Europe and other markets outside the United States. After VNUS was acquired by Covidien in 2009, Mr. Bielang held the position as Vice President Sales & Marketing, Vascular Interventions at Covidien Europe and was responsible for the integration of the newly developed Covidien vascular team. With his efforts, Covidien became the market leader in the thermal ablation technique for varicose veins. In 2012, Mr. Bielang became International Sales Director Europe at Sapheon (later acquired by Covidien, now part of Medtronic). He was responsible for the market development and commercialization of the VenaSeal Closure System – a non-thermal ablation technology for venous reflux disease – in the European phlebology market. Mr. Bielang holds a Business College Diploma from the Commercial Education College Stuttgart/Waiblingen.

Mike Mirizzi has over 25 years of hands-on experience and technical management/leadership in medical device R&D and product development in start-up, medium and large companies spanning multiple clinical indications. Before joining Venclose, Mr. Mirizzi served as Director of R&D for Spirox/Entellus/Stryker where he was responsible for helping to build and direct the R&D team commercializing a novel bioabsorbable Nasal Implant for treating nasal airway obstruction. Over his career, Mr. Mirizzi has held multiple positions of increasing responsibility at Qool Therapeutics, Inc. as Vice President of R&D developing new therapies for therapeutic hypothermia, Director of R&D at VNUS/Covidien developing new therapies for multiple indications including venous insufficiency, Guidant Compass Neurovascular and Target Therapeutics developing endovascular technologies for treating ischemic stroke. He started his career at Alcon Surgical manufacturing and developing products for ophthalmic indications. Mr. Mirizzi holds a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and is an inventor on over 70 issued and pending US and foreign patents.

Jeffrey Carr, MD is a practicing interventional cardiologist and endovascular specialist. He brings more than 25 years of clinical experience to Venclose. As Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Carr is responsible for leading Venclose’s medical advisory board and plays a key role in new product development. Throughout his career, he has served globally as a faculty educator for venous reflux disease therapies. In addition, his practice site is a Center of Excellence for live case preceptorships and training for arterial and venous interventions. Dr. Carr is the Founding and Past President of the Outpatient Endovascular and Interventional Society (OEIS), a multispecialty medical society where he launched and currently serves as the Medical Director of the OEIS National Registry. For four years, he served as National Medical Director of National Cardiovascular Partners, which operates 26 office-based catheterization labs in 6 states in partnership with over 260 physicians performing 24,000 same-day cardiac and peripheral vascular interventions annually. He is also the Founding Partner and Director of the Vein Center of East Texas. Dr. Carr received his medical degree from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and completed his residency and fellowship at the UCLA Medical Center.

Gregory Vislocky brings a thorough understanding of the financial marketplace. Currently, Mr. Vislocky serves as Executive Vice President of Finance/Partner and Vice Chairman of the Board at Prestige Care, Inc. For more than 25 years, Mr. Vislocky has served at Prestige in various investment banking capacities including asset acquisition, disposition and derivative enhancements. He is also involved in short- and long-term strategic planning. Mr. Vislocky is a member of Prestige Senior Living, LLC and is a partner in DD&F, the company’s real estate holding entity. Prior, Mr. Vislocky enjoyed a distinguished, 20-year career as a Managed Money Specialist with major brokerage institutions, including Prudential/Bache and Smith Barney. Mr. Vislocky received a Bachelor of Science in Finance degree from California State University at Long Beach.

Charles Chon is Partner and Managing Director of Ally Bridge Group, a global healthcare investment fund based in Hong Kong. Mr. Chon leads ABG’s effort in Medical Technologies and Pharmaceuticals, and is a member of ABG’s Investment Committee. He has nearly two decades of healthcare investing and business strategy experience. Before joining ABG, Mr. Chon was a healthcare public equity research analyst for over 13 years on both the buy-side and sell-side, mostly as a senior equity research analyst at Goldman Sachs on the US medical devices team. From there, Mr. Chon became the Sector Head for US medical devices research at Stifel Nicolaus. Mr. Chon began his career on Wall Street at ABN AMRO and also covered the healthcare sector from the buy-side at Fred Alger Management. Mr. Chon holds the CFA designation, and received his MBA (healthcare management) from Boston University and BA (Chemistry) from Amherst College.