we’re on a mission

Caroline (Caro) Van Hove

President and CEO

Caro Van Hove is a global commercial leader with over 20 years of diverse experience in the pharmaceutical, consumer and medical device industry. Her depth of commercial leadership experience spans North America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Latin America.

Prior to Revelle Aesthetics, Caro held several commercial leadership roles at both start-up and large-cap companies. She serves as Executive Chair on the Board of Directors of Sientra, a publicly-traded medical aesthetics company specialized in breast aesthetics. She is also a proud member of the Board of Directors of Mission Plasticos, a global non-profit dedicated to providing reconstructive surgery to children in need.

Caro previously served as Chief Commercial Officer of Sienna Biopharmaceuticals, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on therapies in immunology and inflammation. Prior to Sienna, she was Senior Vice President of International Strategic Marketing at Allergan, where she oversaw commercial operations for the medical aesthetics, eye care and specialty care franchises. Previously, Caro managed sales & marketing, customer service and customer excellence in Europe, Africa and the Middle East and led Allergan’s international medical aesthetics operations. She also served as part of Allergan’s Global Operations & International Leadership Teams.

Eb Bright, Esq.

Co-Founder and Chief Administrative Officer

Eb Bright has many years of technology development, company formation and operation experience running the ExploraMed incubator. He is a co-founder of several companies, a patent attorney, and has served on the executive management teams of many start-up companies in multiple capacities (Acclarent, Neotract, Vibrynt, Moximed, Nuelle, Willow and Revelle Aesthetics) over the last 15 years.

Eb is a co-founder of and serves on the Alliance for U.S. Startups & Inventors for Jobs (USIJ) Board. Previously, Eb was Director of Intellectual Property West Coast Operations at Guidant Corporation where he directed a team involved in litigation and the strategic development of over 1300 patent and trademark applications related to the Vascular Intervention, Cardiac Surgery and Endovascular Solutions divisions as well as handling legal issues for Guidant Japan and the Compass Group, the unit responsible for Guidant’s venture capital and merger and acquisition activities.

Eb is an inventor on sixteen U.S. issued patents with others currently pending. He holds M.B.A.s from Columbia University and University of California, Berkeley, and Juris Doctorate and B.S. in Mechanical Engineering degrees from the University of Oklahoma.

Jonathan Podmore

CO-FOUNDER AND CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER

Jonathan Podmore has over 25 years of experience in medical device development. As ExploraMed Project Architect, he created and co-founded NC8 Inc. which became Revelle Aesthetics.

Prior to ExploraMed and founding Revelle Aesthetics, Jonathan was a Founder and Vice President of Research and Development for ApniCure, maker of the Winx device for treatment of obstructive sleep apnea. He has also held management and engineering roles at Allux Medical and Epicor Medical, where he was lead engineer for Epicor’s high-intensity ultrasound ablation device for atrial fibrillation.

Jonathan started his medical device career with Guidant Origin Medsystems. He graduated with an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rose-Hulman.

Jacque Sanine

Vice President Operations

Jacque Sanine has over 30 years of experience in start-up medical device and pharmaceutical environments. Most recently Jacque was the VP of Operations at Arrinex Inc., an ENT company treating chronic rhinitis and at Pivot Medical, a hip arthroscopy company. He has also held leadership positions at Advanced Cardiovascular Systems, Endovascular Technologies, Guidant, Ventrica, Argonaut Technologies and Durect Corporation.

Jacque has extensive expertise in supply chain/CMO management, device manufacturing, logistics, distribution, COGS reduction, MRP implementation, customer service, risk mitigation and organizational development. He has consistently built successful organizations from product development through commercial scale up and acquisition.

Jacque earned his BS in Business Administration at La Salle University.

Christina Meyer

Vice President Marketing

Christina has driven commercial assessments and efforts leading to the acquisition, development, or launch of many impactful and disruptive innovations and advancements in the medical, aesthetics and reconstructive surgical settings. As a marketer at heart, she has developed and led numerous breakthrough campaigns that have been recognized by consumer and healthcare industry organizations for their effectiveness.

Christina received her B.S. in Biology; Physiology and Neuroscience from UC San Diego. Her passion for medicine began early, having spent several years throughout high school and college working and interning in HIV and AIDS research, internal medicine and sports medicine. Christina proudly served on the Board of Directors of the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Los Angeles for the better part of a decade.

Ben Bishop

Vice President Sales

Ben Bishop is a performance-driven commercial leader focused on strategically building markets and teams, implementing best-in-class sales processes and training, launching new products and managing top performing, accountable sales organizations.

Ben brings nearly two decades of sales experience and leadership across medical, surgical and aesthetics industries, from start-up to growth-stage to Fortune 500 companies. Most recently, he was Vice President of Sales at Revance Therapeutics. Prior to that he held numerous sales and leadership positions at Arrinex, Cardinal Health, Access Closure and Cordis Endovascular.

Ben holds a BS in Business Administration from Miami University of Ohio.

Vanessa Nguyen

Chief Financial Officer

Vanessa Nguyen is a Finance Leader with over 15 years of experience in the medical device industry. Her expertise is in commercial launch, organizational scaling, systems implementation, strategic planning, and financial execution. She has led large successful public organizations as well as grown and developed smaller companies to meet industry operational standards.

Most recently, Vanessa was the VP of Finance at Teleflex where she oversaw its Customer Service, Sales Operations, Finance, and Accounting functions. Before its acquisition by Teleflex, Vanessa held multiple leadership roles at NeoTract to successfully support and drive the commercial launch execution of its disruptive technology.

In addition to her recent experience, Vanessa has held various key Financial and Sales Operation roles at Guidant, MAQUET, and Abbott Laboratories.

Vanessa holds an M.B.A. from California State University, San Jose and a B.A. from California State, Fullerton.

Josh Makower, MD

ExploraMed Founder and Executive Chairman, Revelle Aesthetics Co-Founder

Notable transactions from the ExploraMed portfolio include NeoTract; acquired by Teleflex in 2017, Nuelle; acquired by Aytu in 2017, Acclarent; acquired by J&J in 2009, EndoMatrix; acquired by C.R. Bard in 1997 and TransVascular; acquired by Medtronic in 2003. On-going ExploraMed/NEA ventures include Moximed, Willow and ExploraMed V. Dr. Makower currently serves on the board of directors for DOTS Devices, Eargo (NASDAQ: EAR), ExploraMed, Allay Therapeutics, Intrinsic Therapeutics, Lungpacer, Moximed, Willow, SetPoint Medical and Coravin.

Dr. Makower holds over 300 patents and patent applications for various medical devices in the fields of cardiology, ENT, general surgery, drug delivery, plastic surgery, dermatology, aesthetics, obesity, orthopedics, women’s health, and urology. He received an MBA from Columbia University, an MD from the NYU School of Medicine, and a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT.

Dave Amerson 

CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD

Mr. Amerson currently serves as Executive Chairman of the Board for Revelle Aesthetics. He is the former President (retired 2021) of NeoTract Interventional Urology at Teleflex. He also served as President and Chief Executive Officer and member of ExploraMed’s Board of Directors for NeoTract, Inc. from July 2011 to October 2017 when the company was successfully acquired by Teleflex for $1.1B.

From 2006 to 2011, Mr. Amerson was Global Vice President, General Manager for the Surgical Urology division of Coloplast, a publicly traded medical equipment company based in Denmark. From 1990 to 2006, Mr. Amerson worked at Mentor, a publicly traded medical device company where he was Global Vice President of Sales and Marketing for the Urology division when it was acquired by Coloplast for $463M.

Mr. Amerson led NeoTract to become a best-in-class medical device company, achieving significant milestones including FDA de novo clearance, new CPT 1 codes, a New Tech APC code, ~300M U.S. covered lives. Both NeoTract and Mr. Amerson have been recognized as one of the most recent successful medical device companies in recent years.

Mr. Amerson was recognized with “The Deal Maker” Award at the 2018 Medtech CEO Conference and the Phoenix 2018 Emerging Growth Company Award at the 25th Annual Phoenix Medical Device and Diagnostic CEO Conference. Mr. Amerson is often asked to speak on leadership and management. He was recently a panelist at the Stanford University BioDesign Center.

Mr. Amerson also currently serves as Chairman of the Board for Palette Life Sciences and is a Board Member for Calyxo Medical. He holds an M.B.A. from Argosy University and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of West Georgia.

Karen Long 

Board Member

Ms. Long is the Managing Director of KCK MedTech. KCK focuses capital investment on highly disruptive therapies within the medical device sector. Ms. Long has been with KCK since January 2018 when she joined as Executive-in-Residence. Within KCK, she serves as Board Director at Revelle Aesthetics, LungPacer Medical (transvascular diaphragm pacing), and Barologics (hypertension), as well as Chairman of the Board of Aerin Medical (ENT) and Sonex Health (orthopedics). In addition to KCK, Ms. Long sits on the Boards of Brius Technologies (orthodontics) and Natural Cycles (women’s consumer health).

Prior to KCK, Ms. Long was President and CEO of Nuelle, a women’s consumer health company incubated at ExploraMed. Nuelle was acquired in 2017. In early 2007, she joined Acclarent as Worldwide Vice President of Marketing and led Acclarent’s marketing efforts through rapid growth and ultimately through the acquisition by Johnson & Johnson. She remained with Johnson & Johnson until joining the ExploraMed incubator in 2012. Acclarent was also an early spinout from ExploraMed.

Ms. Long has spent over 20 years in medical devices and diagnostics developing and marketing novel and market-leading products focused on improving quality of life. She has held a series of key operating roles in consumer diagnostic companies, ChemTrak and Inverness Medical, and management positions at LifeScan, a Johnson & Johnson company, after the acquisition of Inverness Medical.

Ms. Long began her career as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker after receiving her undergraduate and graduate degrees from San Diego State University.

Nina Richardson 

Board Member

Ms. Richardson is a proven executive with over 35 years of experience in engineering, manufacturing, sales operations, supply chain management and global operations. She has held executive positions in a variety of industry sectors including electronics, consumer products, manufacturing, distribution and industrial equipment.

Previously, Ms. Richardson served as Chief Operating Officer for GoPro – delivering outstanding operational results and helping take the company public. She held a variety of roles at Flex, running several manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and Mexico and leading multi-billion-dollar global accounts.

Ms. Richardson is a member of the board of directors of public companies, Silicon Labs, Resideo, Cohu and Eargo; private companies, Willow, Mythic, Tonal, and Revelle Aesthetics. She was previously on the boards of Zayo, Callidus Cloud and Silicon Graphics. She has strong governance experience, serving on compensation, audit and nominating and governance committees and is currently Nom/Gov chair on two of her current public boards in which her role encompasses oversight of ESG. In her private company and advisory roles, she frequently coaches CEOs and the technical and operations teams, advises on scaling operations and works with teams on product development and supply chain.

Ms. Richardson holds a BSIE from Purdue University and an EMBA from Pepperdine.

Robert Croce

Board Member

Mr. Croce has served or is currently serving on the boards of 8 medtech companies and is chairman of 3 of them. Two were recently sold: Acclarent for $820M and Neotract for $1.1B.

Mr. Croce had a 36-year career at Johnson & Johnson where he held a series of senior positions, culminating with 12 years as Company Group Chairman. Under Mr. Croce’s leadership as Company Group Chairman, Cypher, the world’s first drug-eluting stent, was developed and commercialized, leading to the transformation of interventional cardiology.

Prior to this, Mr. Croce served as Worldwide Franchise Chairman of Cordis. Prior to Cordis, Mr. Croce was Worldwide Franchise Chairman for Ethicon Endo-Surgery which he founded and led to become the worldwide leader in endoscopic surgery.

Mr. Croce began his career with Johnson & Johnson in 1968 as a Sales Representative for Ortho Pharmaceuticals, where he was named Vice President of Marketing. In 1985, Mr. Croce moved to McNeil Pharmaceutical as Vice President of Business Development and later transferred to Ethicon, Inc. as Group Vice President, where he remained until he was named President in 1990. In 1992 he was promoted to Worldwide President, Ethicon Endo-Surgery.

Mr. Croce holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Central Missouri State University.

Dr. Philippe Schaison 

Board Member

Dr. Schaison is a CEO, CCO and Global President, in consumer healthcare, consumer goods & retail sectors (Asia, South America & Europe) with experience running a $2.5B+ business growing 17% a year (Allergan), acquiring/integrating a +$2B organization, and successfully leading global organizations. His communication/interpersonal skills & ability to work effectively with boards/senior executives and build/lead high-performance teams has informed all his work.

Hired as CEO of Syneron-Candela NA to take the publicly-traded company (ELOS) private, Dr. Schaison sold the company to Private Equity firm Apax in July 2017. Earlier, as Allergan President, US Aesthetic & Dermatology, Dr. Schaison led the Facial Aesthetic, Plastic and MedDerm/Skin Medical Business Unit Presidents. He secured market leadership for Botox and led the acquisition of Kythera.

Previously, Dr. Schaison was President, Clarins Worldwide Travel Retail & Regional President, LATAM and MEA, CEO of Aesthetic Factors, and VP of Global Skin Care for Johnson & Johnson. He sits on the Board of Directors for many companies, including SENTE, Sientra, Dyve Biosciences, and the Galien Foundation.

Dr. Schaison earned an MBA from the Hautes Etudes Commerciales, and a Doctorate in Pharmacy from the University of Paris V.