Slone Partners Recruits Technology Officer for Encodia

November 10, 2021 – Over the past few months, numerous healthcare and life sciences organizations have turned to executive search firms to find new leaders. In the era of COVID-19, the sector has been burgeoning for executive search firms. Recently, life sciences-focused search firm Slone Partners recruited Nigel Beard as chief technology officer at Encodia, a rapidly growing platform company that is developing a new generation of protein analysis tools based on single-molecule protein sequencing. He succeeds Kevin Gunderson, a company co-founder who crafted and led Encodia’s earliest research efforts.

“Nigel Beard has a strong leadership background in both technology/instrument development and operations,” said Leslie Loveless, CEO of Slone Partners. “He has a proven track record in strategic road mapping and the delivery of new innovative product opportunities in single cell, NGS, microfluidic systems, machine learning, and more.”

“We were delighted to work with Slone Partners on this important search.” said Mark Chee, co-founder and president of Encodia. “Kevin is an extraordinary innovator who holds more than 70 patents and patents pending for inventions in a broad variety of scientific disciplines. His gifts helped turn concepts into working prototypes that Encodia is now refining and preparing to bring to market. As our new CTO, Nigel will advance the product in development to full commercialization, and we are thrilled that he is joining our team at such an exciting time.”

Dr. Beard has a track record of bringing transformative life sciences products to market. He most recently served as senior vice president and CTO of operations at Mission Bio, where he launched and scaled Tapestri, a platform for multiomic single cell analysis. Prior to that, he served as COO and CTO at Feetz Inc., served as head of R&D, human identification business at Life Technologies, where he led the integration of numerous acquisitions, and as senior program manager at Applied Biosystems. Dr. Beard is also a board member at Savran Technologies Inc.

As Encodia’s chief technology officer, Dr. Beard and his team will work to develop and scale Encodia’s breakthroughs. The products and methods that emerge will provide unprecedented insight into the proteome, the most dynamic and challenging stage of biology’s central dogma.

“I’m delighted to join Encodia at a time of rapid industry growth, especially in high-throughput platforms and biological big data sets,” said Dr. Beard. “To accelerate our contributions, we are adding strong scientific and technical talent for product development and commercialization. Having devoted my career to genomics and product development, I am honored to be joining the co-founder of Illumina and the talented team at Encodia in building an extraordinary company that will enable proteomics to truly enter the biological information age. Our platform will propel our understanding of complex and chronic diseases, help reveal elusive cures, and enable better patient outcomes.”

Encodia is a privately held biotechnology company bringing the power of sequencing to proteomics. The company’s patented ProteoCode technology enables highly scalable protein analysis via an accessible and easy-to-use benchtop instrument.

Nationally Recognized

Slone Partners is a nationally recognized senior-level recruitment provider that specializes in delivering executive, management and leadership talent for the diagnostic, biopharmaceutical, healthcare information technology and laboratory testing industries. The firm has offices in Boston, New York, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco. Recently, Slone Partners was included among Hunt Scanlon Media’s “Top 50 Healthcare & Life Sciences Search Firms.”

Ms. Loveless has nearly 20 years of healthcare industry and executive search experience to Slone Partners. She joined the firm in 2007, became COO in 2014 and CEO in 2016. At Slone Partners, Ms. Loveless acts as the leader of the organization as well as the head of the executive search team. Her involvement with clients and candidates enables her to understand the key motivations of each. As CEO, Ms. Loveless’ focus extends to cultivating new business partnerships and expanding relationships with existing clients. Through her leadership, life sciences and biotechnology have emerged as the primary client base for Slone Partners.

Recruiting CTOs

An assortment of executive search firms has placed CTOs in recent months. Here’s a look at a few from the Hunt Scanlon Media archives:

Russell Reynolds Associates has been called in by The Rockefeller Foundation to lead its search for a new chief technology officer. The search firm is seeking candidates with a professional record of accomplishment that reflects significant strategic partnership with and contribution to the business, including demonstrated leadership in large, complex, multi-divisional global settings. Russell Reynolds Associates is looking for candidates with a minimum of 15 years’ experience as a CTO, or similar role, for a global foundation or related industry.

Renovata & Company has recruited Mugur Tolea as chief technology officer for Blue Foundry Bank, which specializes in “craft banking” for consumers and small businesses. “Mugur brings more than 30 years of industry, technical and leadership experience to his new role, and he knows how to operate at the pace of a small- to medium-sized company,” said Mannie Gill, partner at Renovata & Company. “He will develop a technical and product vision and strategy that focuses on mid- to longer-term needs for the company—ensuring alignment with the bank’s overall business objectives.” Mr. Tolea was previously vice president of technology, search, and discoverability for Walmart eCommerce.

San Diego, CA-headquartered executive search firm Bespoke Partners has placed Atish Ghosh as the chief technology officer for Cority Software in Toronto. He replaces the retiring CTO, Stan Marsden, who worked for Cority for 28 years. Alex Bossetta led the assignment. Mr. Ghosh brings over 20 years of experience in product engineering expertise in B2B cloud-based software, products, and services to Cority. He joins the company from Neustar.