Carole Spangler Vaughn, PhD, MBA
CEO, Founder, Inventor, Director
Dr. Carole Spangler Vaughn holds a Ph.D. in Biophysics (Johns Hopkins University) and an MBA (University of Washington). For over 25 years, she has worked for large and small entities, in the laboratory and in business development, including Bristol-Myers Squibb, University of Washington (Office of Technology Transfer), Dendreon Corporation, and Clario Medical Imaging. She owned and operated MediVet Hawaii, a veterinary regenerative medicine franchise. She was a Strategy Consultant/Interim CEO for Emtora Biosciences. She has also consulted several life science companies on strategy, partnering, fundraising, sales, and marketing.
Jessica Urban, MS
VP Product Development
Jessica Urban has over 25 years of experience in product development including management and contributing roles in Business Development, Program Management, Quality and engineering. Most of her career has been focused on leading high performance teams in the product development of medical devices and consumer electronics. She has collaborated with many different clients from startups to multi-nationals on products including consumer health, wearables, catheter systems, interventional tools, drug delivery devices, point-of-care diagnostics, lab instrumentation, mobile apps, monitoring devices, consumer electronics and many more.
Paul Klein, MBA
VP Marketing
Paul Klein is a lecturer at the Tuft University Gordon Institute in Product Management and Marketing. Paul concluded his 40-year career at GE as Director, Global Marketing Communication, for the GE Healthcare Diagnostic Imaging business and before that, the Healthcare Information Technology business. He is an experienced marketer with B2B and B2C expertise in durables, CPG and medical products. He led product management and marketing for the Europe, Middle East and Africa Appliance business based in Brussels, Belgium, where he helped establish and grow the operation. Paul led the development and commercial launch or relaunch of key brands include (GE Appliances) Café, Profile, (Cross Industry) Juniper Medical, Zibrio Stability, Zaether Company, Summit Arthroscope, Stellix Global Services.
Martin A. Simonetti
Board Chair
Martin Simonetti served as President and CEO of VLST from 2005 to 2013. Prior to that, he was employed at Dendreon as the CFO, Senior Vice President of Finance, and Treasurer. He served as the VP of Operations and Finance of Amgen BioPharma and Director of Amgen's Colorado Operations. He also worked at Genentech, first as a scientist in the Medicinal and Analytical Chemistry Department and later as a financial analyst and group controller. Mr. Simonetti serves on the Board of Directors of Curtana Pharmaceuticals, Nexgenia, EpiThany, and VLST. He previously served on the Board of Directors of Alexandria Real Estate Equities (NYSE: ARE) and Icagen, a Nasdaq company, until its sale to Pfizer. He was also a past member of the Dean’s executive advisory board for the Albers School of Business and Economics at Seattle University and former chairman of the board of Life Sciences Washington. He received an M.S. and B.S. from the University of California, Davis and an M.B.A. from the University of Santa Clara.