About Us | MEDA Angels

Vrushab Gowda, MD, JD
Venture Fellow

Vrushab Gowda is a physician-attorney and current radiology resident at Massachusetts General Hospital. He leverages his background to explore novel issues in federal digital health regulation, including premarket review of AI tools, integrated device oversight, mHealth governance, and cybersecurity matters. Vrushab brings previous experience from the FDA, a leading international law firm, Legacy (YC S19), and the Parliament of the United Kingdom. His written work has resulted in over 40 articles, book chapters, and commentaries and has been featured in JAMA Health Forum, Nature Biotechnology, The Milbank Quarterly, and Health Affairs Forefront, some of which have been cited by the FDA and Members of Congress. Vrushab received his JD from Harvard Law School and his MD from UNC Chapel Hill. He is a member of the Massachusetts Bar.

Debbie Garner
Reimbursement

Debbie Garner, Co- CEO of FEMSelect, is an experienced healthcare executive with over 20 years of experience with commercialization of drugs, devices and HCIT. Debbie began her career at Eli Lilly where she held a variety of brand management and sales management roles in the US and Global organizations. In her sales management role, Debbie led a team of 15 and was responsible for over $25M in sales. As a product manager, Debbie designed and executed a new product launch strategy that achieved reimbursement in the Israeli health basket. Subsequently, Debbie joined iMDsoft as Director of Professional Services and was responsible for software implementation in hospitals through Europe, Israel and Australia. Before joining FEMSelect, Debbie served as the EMEA Regional Director for Avalere Health, focusing on reimbursement strategies for start-ups. Debbie received her BA from Harvard and an MBA from Wharton.

Fred Gumbinner, JD
Legal

Fred Gumbinner, JD supports MEDA Angels’ evaluation of startup company term sheets and provides related strategic counsel.

He is a serial executive / entrepreneur / advisor / mentor / investor, experienced in general management, corporate & project development, legal, finance and capital-raising matters. He is one of the founding members of MEDA Angels and provides diligence support on term sheets and term negotiations.

Mr. Gumbinner has successfully assisted numerous ventures raise various rounds and types of financing – 4Fs, Angel, Seed, A-Round, B-Round, Venture Capital, Fund and other Institutional Investments, PIPEs, Commercial Bank, Senior, Mezzanine and Subordinated Debt, Government, Strategic Partner and Acquisition Financing, IPOs, and Dispositions or other exits. He currently is a Managing Director of a Private Equity firm and President of Keiretsu Forum DC Metro Chapter.

Mr. Gumbinner has over 35 years of progressive domestic and international experience in areas including corporate organization, strategic business planning, M&A, project development, entrepreneurism, investment and finance. He has participated in over US$25 billion of successful financings and corporate transactions.

In addition to his numerous private investment activities, Mr. Gumbinner is a consultant and advisor to many early stage ventures, and has served in an executive capacity or on Boards &/or Advisory Groups of over 50 ventures such as, Propel, GPS, G2 GEM Finance, YGF Funding Group, Frontera, TerraWi, BDR Avanti Finance, FRG Enterprises, One World Virtual, Galen Capital, Columbia Electric, Gregory Power Partners, and more.

Mr. Gumbinner received his BA (magna cum laude) from Colgate University and his JD. degree (magna cum laude and Contributing Editor of the Michigan Law Review) from The University of Michigan Law School.

Quan Nguyen, JD
Intellectual Property

Quan Nguyen, JD supports MEDA Angels’ review of IP portfolios of therapeutics and medical device startup companies.

He is a Partner at Nguyen Tarbet LLC, an elite boutique Intellectual Property law firm representing inventors and organizations with impactful, cutting-edge technologies. Quan has great passion for the process of commercializing new inventions. He works closely with his clients to build winning patent portfolios and help identify strategic partners, screen for potential business deals, and analyze market opportunities. In addition to his advisory role with MEDA Angels, Quan is an active member of the Tech Coast Angels (TCA), Desert Angels, and Life Science Angels, where he leads a number of investment deals.

As a seasoned patent attorney, Quan concentrates his practice in patent procurement, opinion work (patentability/freedom to operate analysis), and intellectual property management of inventions in biotechnology, chemistry, medical devices, microfluidics, bioinformatics, and artificial intelligence. His clients include publicly traded companies, major corporations, universities, investors, and entrepreneurs. Prior to founding Nguyen Tarbet LLC, Quan was a Partner at Cozen O’Connor, an international law firm based in Philadelphia. In his earlier career, Quan also worked in-house as an Assistant Director of Patents at Ionis Pharmaceuticals in San Diego, a leader in RNA-targeted therapeutics.

Quan believes in public service and works tirelessly to advance innovation and entrepreneurship. He is an active Member of the College of Science Dean’s Board of Advisors (University of Arizona), School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences Dean’s Leadership Council (University of California, Irvine) and Beall Applied Innovation (University of California Irvine), where he leads various university initiatives to promote innovation through industry partnerships. As Chairman Emeritus of the Advisory Board of the Chemistry and BioChemistry Board of Advisors (University of Arizona), he helped the department develop strategic industry relationships to advance faculty research. Quan regularly speaks at seminars on the subject of innovation, technology investments, and trends in patent law.

Stewart Gitler, JD
Intellectual Property

Stewart Gitler, JD supports MEDA Angels’ review of IP portfolios of therapeutics and medical device startup companies.

He is a Partner with Welsh, Flaxman & Gitler of McLean, VA. Mr. Gitler brings over 30 years of legal experience specializing in Intellectual Property and Mr. Gitler has an extensive background in chemical technology practice and is experienced in all phases of U.S. and International Intellectual Property procurement and opposition practice as well as in unfair competition issues. He is a member of the New York Bar, the District of Columbia Bar and the Virginia State Bar. In addition, he is registered to practice in front of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He has also been named as a member of Virginia’s legal elite for the years 2008-2020 and is rated as an AV Preeminent Attorney by Martindale-Hubbell Peer Ratings. He holds a Bachelors of Chemical Engineering from The Cooper Union and received a J.D. from the Hofstra University School of Law.

Laura Beken, MBA
Executive Director

Laura is the Executive Director of MEDA Angels and the Director at Tech Coast Angels, responsible for operations, portfolio, and syndication. In addition, she is a business consultant at SBDC LaunchPad, Octane, helping healthcare startups prepare for investor engagement. Prior roles include running the innovation institute at CHOC Children’s hospital and being an editor for the Physicians News Network.

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Tai Mai, MBA, CFA
General Partner

Tai is a partner at MEDA Angels. Originally joining the team in 2019, he has experience diligencing healthcare technology and medical device investment opportunities, having covered Financial, Market, Exit Strategy, and Team sections. His focus areas include digital health, AI technologies, and medtech. In addition to his diligence support, Tai’s responsibilities include venture fund and angel group operations. Before joining MEDA, Tai had experience in data science/analytics, financial modeling, marketing research in various roles at at Sibley Innovation Hub, Medtronic, Comscore, and Merkle. Tai has an MBA from Georgetown University and a BSE in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University.

Elizabeth Cho-Fertikh, PhD
General Partner & Managing Director

Elizabeth has 25+ years cross-functional experience in drug development (oncology), regulatory affairs and clinical trials for startups, biotech & academia. She has been an active angel investor for the past decade. She currently serves as a Scientific & Commercialization Advisor to the NIH’s National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Technology Transfer Office, as a reviewer of NCI SBIR/STTR grants and formerly on the Investment Committee of the Health Innovation Consortium, providing investment recommendations to the VA Commonwealth Health System. Elizabeth also serves on the advisory board of healthcare startups including Playbl, Oxiwear & NuvOx Pharma and as a regulatory affairs consultant to numerous biotech & medical device companies. She received her BA from Johns Hopkins, her MS from Georgetown University, her PhD from Thomas Jefferson School of Medicine and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School & NIH.

Ferdinand Hui, MD
General Partner

Ferdinand Hui, MD, a neurointerventional surgeon served on faculty at Cleveland Clinic for 7 years and Johns Hopkins for 6 years, before assuming the role of Medical Director of Neurointervention at the Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.  He has authored over 150 peer–reviewed publications, is a frequent international lecturer and presently serves as committee chair for Venous and CSF diseases for the Society of Neurointerventional Surgery.  He has worked closely with the Engineering and Business schools at Johns Hopkins and at the University of Hawaii, forging pathways to develop new technologies and processes to improve healthcare delivery, including helicopter–mediated stroke intervention, as well as research in AI–driven care management platforms.  He has started 3 companies, and advises several other startups.

Greg Buchert, MD, MPH
General Partner

Greg Buchert, MD, MPH is a Partner at MEDA Angels and the CEO of GSB Health Management Solutions, a consulting firm focused on innovative solutions to improve the health care delivery system. He has over 25 years of C-Suite experience in health plan leadership roles and leverages that in his roles as advisor to startup companies. He is the former President and CEO of Blue Shield of California’s Promise Health Plan that serves over 500,000 Medicaid, Medicare and Dual Eligible members. He previously served as the Chief Executive Officer that launched Centene’s first Medicaid Managed Care Plan in California and later as Chief Medical Officer of HealthNet after its acquisition by Centene. Greg was a founding executive for CalOptima, a public managed care organization where he served as Chief Operating Officer and Medical Director. He began his professional career as a pioneer in Pediatric Emergency Medicine working in leadership positions at two children’s hospitals.

Min Lang, MD, MSc
Associate Partner

Min Lang, MD, MSc is a neuroradiology fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. He was a co-founder and CEO of Alias Medical, a medical imaging-based startup that was acquired. He now serves as an advisor for multiple startups. He is the Co-founder and Innovation Director of the AR/VR Lab at MGH where he leads the development, testing, and implementation of extended reality technology across Mass General Hospital. He also serves as the VP of Operations at the American Medical Extended Reality Association. Dr. Lang has more than 60 peer reviewed articles, has presented at international and national conferences, and has held multiple research grants and awards. Dr. Lang obtained his BSc and MSc from the University of Toronto and his MD from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

John Brzezenski, MBA
Fund Board Advisor

John Brzezenski, MBA serves on the Advisory Board for the MEDA Angels Fund, providing strategic counsel on Fund development and capital raising.

He has a broad-based strategic marketing background spanning operating/executive management, advisory and private equity roles, helping numerous companies develop and execute successful growth strategies.   Mr. Brzezenski has developed perspective from “all sides of the table,” having been a Partner with a Strategy/Mergers and Acquisition advisory firm, senior operating executive, and member of the investment committee of a venture capital firm.  His experience has spanned all stages of a company lifecycle and all aspects of business planning, strategy development, business development, marketing strategy/execution and acquisitions/financing.  Industry experience includes many areas within the high-technology industry (enterprise software, communications equipment and services, semiconductor applications), medical and health-related products/services, chemicals and other process industries.  John started his career in the energy industry with Arthur D. Little, focused on natural gas, power generation and alternative energy markets and technologies.  Mr. Brzezenski has also recently served as President of a Food Products company on behalf of a private investment group.

John is also active in commercial and mixed-use real estate development, principally in acquiring and redeveloping multi-tenant assets located in the Greater Boston area.

He competed in two Division 1 college sports (football and track, NCAA provisional qualifier), and has morphed into an avid runner (9 marathons, 150+ races) and health/wellness enthusiast.  He was recently Chair of the Library Trustees in his town and is serving, or has served, on multiple nonprofit and for-profit boards, including the Board of the Launchpad Venture Group.

John graduated with honors from Harvard University with an AB in Economics, and holds an MBA from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University.

John-Michael Sungur
Product Management & Commercial Strategy

John-Michael serves on the MEDA Angels prescreening committee and as a diligence advisor to MEDA Angels. His expertise rests in medical device product management & commercial strategy.

He served as the Director of Product Management at Corindus where he led product strategy for the company’s commercial and next generation endovascular robotic platforms. While at Corindus, John-Michael developed the remote stroke product vision and led execution of the first-in-human neuro-interventional robotics procedure, supporting the $1.1B acquisition by Siemens Healthineers. Prior to this, he held positions at Medtronic and HeartWare, where he set product strategies, supported clinical trials, and enabled successful launches for 510k and PMA products. John-Michael is currently a founding team member and VP of Product at Method AI, a startup company that is developing an image-guided surgical navigation platform designed to enable improved outcomes for robotic surgical procedures.

Tomas Philipson, PhD
Product Management & Commercial Strategy

Tomas Philipson, PhD provides health economics counsel to MEDA Angels diligence efforts and on the Board of Nested Knowledge, a MEDA Angels Fund portfolio company.

He serves on the Board or Board of Advisers for several companies including GATC Health, Forbes Manhattan, Biologx, Liberatio, PragmaHealth, Epigenetix & Nested Knowledge.

He has also held several prominent public sector positions. From 2017-2020, Dr. Philipson served full-time within The White House as a Member, the Vice Chairman, and Acting Chairman of The President’s Council of Economic Advisers. Additionally, he continued his executive office experience as a health care advisor across several U.S. Presidential campaigns. In 2015, he was the scientific advisor to the House of Representatives 21st Century Cures and The Biden Cancer Initiative in 2017. He was appointed to the Key Indicator Commission by the Speaker of the House of Representatives in 2012. In 2003-2004, he worked as a full-time senior economic advisor to the heads of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

A co-founder of Precision Health Economics LLC, Dr. Philipson developed a health care consultancy with 12 offices located throughout the US, Canada, and Europe before it was acquired in 2015.

Dr. Philipson is the Daniel Levin Chair of Public Policy Emeritus at The University of Chicago and was a visiting professor at Yale University. While in academia, he received numerous worldwide research awards and was a two-time winner of the highest award of his field, the Arrow Award of The International Health Economics Association. Other awards include the Garfield Award for Economic Research of Research America, the Prêmio Haralambos Simeonidis from the Brazilian Economic Association, and the Milken Institute’s Distinguished Economic Research Award.

He devotes time as a member of multiple think tanks and non-profit organizations including The National Bureau of Economic Research, The Milken Institute, and American Enterprise Institute.

A frequent contributor to popular media, Dr. Philipson’s portfolio includes a ten-year standing Op-Ed column in Forbes. Other publications are within The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, CBS, NBC, CBNC, Fox News, Fox Business, Bloomberg, and CSPAN.

A diverse educational background includes a B.A. in Mathematics from Uppsala University in Sweden, M.A. in Mathematics from Claremont Graduate School, and both an M.A. as well as a PhD from the Wharton School and University of Pennsylvania.

Steve Brooks, MD, MBA
Regulatory

Steve Brooks, MD, MBA supports MEDA Angels’ diligence efforts related to FDA regulatory issues for medical device and software-as-a-medical device company technologies.

A multi-faceted health care consultant, publisher, cardiologist and clinical trialist. Formerly an Interventional Cardiologist and Medical Officer in the Office of Device Evaluation at FDA, Steve’s interests include regulatory strategy, scientific and medical due diligence, and medical technology commercialization. Currently, Steve is a Senior Analyst with Popper and Company, a healthcare consulting firm in Baltimore, an Expert Consultant with NDA Partners, a principal at Deep Water Point, Chief Medical Officer of CardioCube and Global Interconnect, Inc., as well as a principal in Brooks Medtech, LLC. In these consulting roles Steve is active in developing thought leadership, content and consultation on multiple interconnected strategic areas. Client services include due diligence, market entry strategy, market segmentation, combined market, regulatory and reimbursement strategy, clinical trial design, and evidence development. By leveraging a large network of contacts in academia, government, including the FDA and CMS, and industry, nuanced guidance is developed for diverse client needs.

Carolyn Campbell, JD, PhD
Fund Board Advisor

Carolyn Campbell  serves on the Advisory Board for the MEDA Angels Fund, providing strategic counsel on Fund governance, development and capital raising.

She is an experienced executive and board director with over 25 years of investing in tech-enabled high-growth businesses across a range of sectors. Ms. Campbell is a founder and managing partner of Emerging Capital Partners (ECP), a private equity firm which has raised nearly $3.5 billion in growth capital for investment in over 70 listed and private companies since 2000. She is a recognized expert in M&A, global capital markets and enterprise risk/ESG.

Meet Our Team

Elizabeth Cho-Fertikh, PhD

Laura Beken, MBA

Tomas Philipson, PhD

Carolyn Campbell, JD, PhD

John Brzezenski, MBA

Steve Brooks, MD

Debbie Garner, MBA

Eric Sun, MD, PhD

Anupam Jena, MD, PhD

Vrushab Gowda, MD, JD

Fred Gumbinner, JD

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