Tanya D. Urbach. Ms. Urbach has been a director since November 24, 2021, and has served as our Board Chair since January 24, 2022. She is currently Partner/Head of Family Office for Eagle Bay Advisors, which provides family office and investment advisory services, and also provides corporate governance and corporate finance advice to Dynepic, Inc., which provides an integrated platform to power immersive training programs for companies and U.S. military forces. From November 2020 through March 31, 2021, Ms. Urbach was a sole practitioner advising broker-dealers, investment advisers and their professionals. From January 2019 through October 2020, she was a shareholder at the law firm Markun, Zusman, Freniere & Compton in Portland, Oregon. She served as General Counsel for Paulson Investment Company, LLC, a registered broker-dealer that provides investment banking services to the Company from time to time, from July 2015 until January 2019, providing advice regarding corporate governance, securities regulatory compliance, corporate finance, and other legal and securities-related issues. Ms. Urbach earned her bachelor’s degree at University of Oregon and her law degree at Lewis & Clark Law School. She served on the Executive Committee of the Oregon State Bar Securities Regulation Section from 2007 through 2015 and 2019 to 2021. She brings extensive training and expertise in the conduct of securities offerings, securities litigation, corporate finance and business growth, corporate governance, and other corporate business and legal issues to the Board.
Lishomwa C. Ndhlovu, M.D., Ph.D. Dr. Ndhlovu has been a director since November 24, 2021, and previously served on the Company’s Scientific Advisory Board. He was appointed to Weill Cornell Medicine in 2019 as Professor of Immunology in Medicine and Neuroscience. Before joining Weill Cornell Medicine, Dr. Ndhlovu was on the faculty at the University of Hawaii and University of California San Francisco from 2010 to 2019. As co-leader of the $26.5 million NIH-supported Martin Delaney Collaboratory, “HOPE”, testing novel approaches towards an HIV cure, and the $11 million “SCORCH” consortium, investigating how substances that can lead to addition modify effects of HIV in the brain, he is a recognized expert in basic and complex translational immunology and engineered immunotherapy research. He has focused much of his work on confronting the challenges of HIV and aging, addressing molecular mechanism of HIV pathogenesis, complications, and persistence. Dr. Ndhlovu received his M.D. from the University of Zambia and his Ph.D. from Tohoku University in Japan and is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and Chair of the American foundation for AIDS (amfAR) Research Scientific Advisory Committee. He brings a deep understanding of the central nervous system aspects of HIV and research expertise in major arenas in which the Company is studying its drug product to the Board.
Karen J. Brunke, Ph.D. Dr. Brunke was appointed as a director effective April 1, 2022. Dr. Brunke has over 30 years of scientific, operational, clinical, senior executive, and corporate/business development managerial experience with large and small biotechnology companies. She is currently the Executive Vice President of Corporate and Business Development at Jaguar Health, Inc. (JAGX), a position she has held since September 2021, following seven months as an independent consultant to Jaguar. Jaguar is a commercial stage pharmaceuticals company focused on developing novel, sustainably derived gastrointestinal products on a global basis. As of January 2023, Dr. Brunke also serves as acting CEO of Magdalena Biosciences, Inc., a joint venture of Jaguar and Filament Health Corp (FH.NE and FLHLF) funded by OneSmallPlanet. During her career, Dr. Brunke has been a business development and strategy consultant to multiple companies and was instrumental in the initiation of several startup companies, including during the period from 2017 through 2020. Dr. Brunke was part of the executive team that merged Mercator Genetics Inc. with Progenitor, a subsidiary of Interneuron Pharmaceuticals, in 1999 and helped take the resulting company public. Dr. Brunke was Chief Operating Officer of Anexus Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of the Japanese public company MediBic, responsible for in- and out-licensing assistance for Japanese companies, from 2004 through June 2006, and was founding Chief Executive Officer of Cardeus Pharmaceuticals, a neuroscience company, from 2011 through March 2014. Dr. Brunke received her BA in Biochemistry as well as a Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Pennsylvania. Her many years of service in executive management, business development, operations, and corporate development roles at biotechnology companies will be of valuable assistance to the Board.
Ryan M. Dunlap. Mr. Dunlap was appointed as a director effective August 24, 2022. Mr. Dunlap has over 25 years’ experience in finance and operations leadership, developing significant expertise in strategy setting, improving operational efficiency and effectiveness, fundraising and investor relations, financial reporting and compliance, and risk management. Mr. Dunlap joined Gurobi Optimization, a company that offers customers a mathematical optimization solver to address business problems, in October 2019. Prior to that, he was CFO beginning in January 2016, as well as COO beginning in December 2017, at MolecularMD (now ICON Specialty Labs), a growth equity-backed molecular diagnostics company. Mr. Dunlap also previously served as the CFO of Galena Biopharma, Inc., a publicly traded