By Diagnostics World Staff
January 4, 2017 | Human Longevity, Inc. today announced Cynthia Collins as the new Chief Executive Officer effective January 9, 2017. Collins, who has a successful track record and extensive leadership experience in the life sciences sector, will lead HLI and be responsible for all functions of the company including commercialization of HLI key products and strategic operations. She will also join the Board of Directors.
Venter, who is a co-founder, will relinquish the CEO role but will continue to serve as Executive Chairman of the HLI Board of Directors and will remain in a daily role leading the scientific strategy and direction of HLI.
"We are extremely pleased to have Cindy join HLI as our new CEO. Her wide-ranging experience in leading and growing commercial operations for privately-held and publicly-traded life science businesses, will be invaluable to HLI," said Dr. Venter in a statement. "2017 will be a key year for HLI with the launch and expansion of many of our products including oncology, whole genome, HLI Knowledgebase, HLI Search, and the HLI Health Nucleus. Cindy's combination of innovative business leadership, coupled with commercialization and operations acumen in a variety of life science arenas, is the perfect skill set to bring our vision of high quality, genomic-powered products to the global marketplace."
Human Longevity’s Knowledgebase and Health Nucleus programs won the Judges’ Prize Best Practices award last year at the 2016 Bio-IT World Conference & Expo.
In the same statement, Collins said, "HLI represents a tremendous opportunity to change healthcare and improve patient outcomes. I cannot imagine a more perfect union of my combined experience in diagnostics, therapeutics, and life sciences and in leading organizations through multiple phases of their life cycles to create value. I believe my capabilities and experience, combined with Dr. Venter's scientific success and vision, are highly complementary and will create a solid foundation for HLI's future."
Collins comes to HLI most recently from GE Healthcare where she was the CEO/ General Manager for the Cell Therapy and Purification and Analysis Businesses. Prior to that she was CEO of GE's Clarient Diagnostics, Inc., an in vitro diagnostics business. In her three years with GE, she restructured and refocused teams and investments for multiple strategic businesses and oversaw several strategic investments in Cell Therapy, which is a strategic growth play for GE.
Prior to joining GE, Collins was president and CEO of Genvec Inc.; Group Vice President of the Cellular Analysis Business Group, a business of Beckman Coulter; President and CEO of Sequoia Pharmaceuticals; and President of Clinical Microsensors. She spent 17 years at Baxter Healthcare Corporation and six years at Abbott Laboratories in a variety of operational positions.
Collins received her MBA from The University of Chicago, Booth School of Business and a Bachelor's of Science in Microbiology from the University of Illinois.