Our leadership
Board of directors
JAY WATKINS Chairman
Jay Watkins is an operating executive with extensive experience founding and funding healthcare companies. He was founding CEO of Origin Medsystems, which was purchased by Eli Lilly & Company and became part of Guidant Corporation where he served as a Vice President and led corporate business development. He also co-founded Gynecare (acquired by Johnson & Johnson).
He is an active angel investor and also serves as a managing director of a US venture firm. Prior to Origin, he held management positions in several start-ups, including Microgenics Corporation (acquired by Boehringer Mannheim), and was a consultant with McKinsey & Company. He has served as a board member for both public and private medtech companies. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School.
JACQUES SEGUIN
Jacques Séguin, is a professor of Cardiac Surgery at Paris University and holds, in addition to his MD, a PhD in Biochemistry and a PhD in Medical History.
After 20 years of surgery performing over 4,000 open-heart surgeries and being the author of more than 200 articles published in peer-reviewed international medical journals, he founded several medical technology companies.
Amongst these, CoreValve, acquired by Medtronic in February 2009 for $800 million plus, and Stentys is a publicly traded company developing a stent for myocardial infarction.
He is currently founder and serves as board member of 5 innovative companies in the Medtech space.
ANTIONE PAPIERNIK
Antoine Papiernik is a Managing Partner at Sofinnova Partners. He joined Sofinnova Partners in 1997, and was previously with CDC-Innovation, the venture arm of the Caisse des Dépôts group.
Since joining Sofinnova Partners, Antoine has been an initial investor and active board member in public companies like Actelion, Addex, Orexo, NovusPharma, Movetis and Stentys, which went public respectively on the Zürich stock exchange, the Stockholm stock exchange, the Milan Nuovo Mercato, the Belgium Stock Exchange and EuroNext Paris, in Cotherix (initially NASDAQ listed, then sold to Actelion), CoreValve (sold to Medtronic) and Fovea (sold to Sanofi Aventis). He has also invested in and is a board member of private companies CoAxia, EOS, Mainstay and ReCor. Antoine has an MBA from the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania.
FRANK LITVACK
Frank Litvack M.D. is a native of Montreal, Canada. He received his undergraduate and medical education at McGill University. From 1986 until 2000 he was Co-Director of the Cardiovascular Intervention Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was a Professor of Medicine at UCLA School of Medicine. Dr. Litvack is the author more than one hundred and fifty research articles and chapters and has received several awards for his work in Interventional Cardiology and Translational Medicine.
Dr. Litvack has been an entrepreneur involved with the founding, development and sale of several technology companies. He currently is General Partner in a medical device-engineering incubator, Reprise Technologies LLC and is an active Life Sciences investor. He serves on the Board of Directors of several companies in the biotechnology, diagnostics and medical devices fields.
ANDREW WEISS
Andrew Weiss joined ReCor Medical as President & CEO in April 2013. Mr. Weiss brings over 20 years experience in the Medical Device Industry, starting with global management responsibilities at GE Medical Systems. Mr. Weiss left GE to become Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Marquette Medical Systems. Following Marquette, Mr. Weiss became President & CEO of Vital Images, a company he took public in 1996. Mr. Weiss then joined Medtronic as VP & General Manager of its Surgical Navigation Systems business, following which he became VP & General Manager of the Medtronic Neurological business. Prior to joining ReCor Medical, Mr. Wiess served as President & CEO of CoAxia, Inc.
Mr. Weiss is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in mechanical and electrical engineering and has an MBA from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business.