Social entrepreneurship models that integrate business strategy with social values are generating excitement among the new generation of technology entrepreneurs. Industry giants like Bill Gates, Pierre Omidyar, and Steve Case are applying the business models they used to create Microsoft, eBay, and America Online toward combating poverty and disease around the world. The shift could recast traditional, non-profit philanthropy and in so doing revolutionize current approaches for addressing global healthcare challenges. Join our panel of leading industry experts to discuss the potential for market driven approaches to alleviate global health pandemics.

Moderator:

Raman Sivasubramanyam; Financial Advisor, Merrill Lynch

As a Financial Advisor at Merrill Lynch, Raman works with high-net-worth individuals and families to develop and implement long-term financial strategies that include legacy planning and philanthropic planning. Raman has over ten years of experience in the financial services industry. Prior to Merrill Lynch, he worked with PFPC, a PNC Bank Company. He started his career in the financial services industry as the manager of a start-up foreign exchange division at Amrutanjan Finance (India).

Raman received a degree in Production Engineering from the College of Engineering, Osmanabad (India) and attended Boston College for graduate level study in business administration. He is on the board of the Longwood Symphony Orchestra (LSO), the philanthropic orchestra of Boston's medical community. The LSO not only raises money for, and awareness of, medical non-profits through benefit concerts, but also helps those non-profits build a strong foundation for their long-term development initiatives. Raman is also the co-Chair of the Social Entrepreneurship Initiative at TiE Boston, an international network of entrepreneurs. The Social Entrepreneurship Initiative works to foster innovation and entrepreneurship in the social sector. Raman's other community activities include supporting the United Nations Association of Greater Boston, the Conservatory Lab Charter School and Citizen Schools. His multicultural background-he was raised in India and speaks four languages-often helps him bring a unique perspective to the job at hand.

Panelists:

Thomas Burke, M.D.

Thomas Burke is a senior emergency physician at Massachusetts General, Brigham and Women's and Children's Hospitals in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also the director of the Center for Global Health and Disaster Response at Massachusetts General Hospital and a senior faculty of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Burke has spent half of his career in community practice and half in academia. His many extraordinary experiences include 7½ years in the U.S. Army with several overseas deployments and serving as the doctor for the FBI Hostage Rescue Team at Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge, Idaho. He was director of the emergency department in the U.S. Army's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center during the Bosnian crisis and helped care for 28,000 refugees in Guantanamo Bay in 1995. Currently Dr. Burke is the medical director for two companies that provide expeditions via private jets for international travel.

Dr. Burke is an experienced, compelling public speaker. He recently appeared in an information commercial for the national coalition "Doctors for Medical Liability Reform." Speaking engagements of the past 6 months have included: national conference in emergency medicine in Boston (Sept 06), addressing the United Nations in a special assembly (Oct 06), guest speaker for the annual Harvard Women's Leadership Board meeting (Oct 06), keynote speaker at the Sub-Saharan Africa launch for the Partnership for Maternal and Child Health (Oct 06), speaker at a forum at the London School of Economics (Nov 06), United States National Prayer Breakfast in WA DC (Feb 07), televised grand rounds for pediatrics (Feb 07), televised grand rounds for ob/gyn (Jan 07), televised speaker for technology in medicine (Dec 06), national emergency medicine conference in Denver (Jan 06), National Youth Leadership Forum (Summer series 06 and 07), NYC Grand Rounds (March 07).

In addition to clinical articles that he has written for The New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the American Journal of Emergency Medicine, Academic Emergency Medicine, 911 News, Annals of Emergency Medicine, and Critical Decisions in Emergency Medicine, he is author of Topics in Pediatric Emergency Medicine (a textbook for eastern European physicians [in press]). He has also contributed chapters to Pearls and Pitfalls in Emergency Medicine (Stack LB, Storrow AB, Smith BA, eds., Greenwich: Clinical Communications, Inc., 1995).

Dr. Burke is on several boards to include the UNFPA and National Youth Leadership and has close ties to numerous national and international leaders.

Douglas G. Cole, M.D.

Dr. Cole joined Flagship in 2001. He focuses on Life Science investments. He has led investments in CombinatoRx (NASDAQ: CRXX), Alinea Pharmaceuticals, Tetraphase, Alvine Pharmaceuticals, and Concert Pharmaceuticals. He co-founded Ensemble Discovery with Noubar Afeyan and Professor David Liu of Harvard University, and he served as CEO of the company in its initial stages. He currently serves on the Boards of Directors of Ensemble Discovery, Tetraphase, Concert Pharmaceuticals, Aveo Pharmaceuticals,and CGI Pharmaceuticals, and he is an Observer on the Board of Directors of Alinea, and Alvine. He formerly served on the Board of Directors of CombinatoRx and Morphotek (acquired by Eisai, Inc.). He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Spinal Muscular Atrophy Foundation and the Genetics Advisory Council of the Harvard-Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics serves on the Board of Directors of the Birch Rock Camp in Waterford, ME.

Doug joined Flagship from Vertex Pharmaceuticals, where, as Program Executive, he led a multidisciplinary program that conducted preclinical development through Phase II studies in tissue protection and repair, oversaw an international research collaboration, and was responsible for identifying strategic market and technology opportunities in multiple arenas. Previous to that, he was Medical Director at Cytotherapeutics in charge of various research and clinical activities related to the company’s cell-based therapeutic technologies.

He obtained post-graduate training in medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD and in neurology the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA. In 1992, Doug was appointed Instructor in Neurology at Harvard Medical School and an Assistant in Neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He established a research program investigating the mechanistic basis of neuronal signaling events and plasticity in neuro-psychiatric disorders with the support of the NIH and several non-profit research foundations. Doug holds an AB magna cum laude with High Distinction in English from Dartmouth College, where he was a Senior Fellow and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and an MD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, where he was a member of Alpha Omega Alpha.

Lita Nelsen

Lita Nelsen is the Director of the Technology Licensing Office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she has been since 1986. This office manages over 500 new inventions per year from M.I.T., the Whitehead Institute, and Lincoln Laboratory. Typically, they negotiate over 100 licenses, and start up over 20 new companies per year

Ms. Nelsen earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering from M.I.T. and an M.S. in Management from M.I.T. as a Sloan Fellow.

Prior to joining the M.I.T. Technology Licensing Office, Ms. Nelsen spent 20 years in industry, primarily in the fields of membrane separations, medical devices, and biotechnology, at such companies as Amicon, Millipore, Arthur D. Little, Inc., and Applied Biotechnology.

Ms. Nelsen was the 1992 President of the Association of University Technology Managers and serves on the board the Mount Auburn Hospital, and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Foundation. She serves as the intellectual property advisor to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and is a founding and current board member of the Center for Management of Intellectual Property in Health Research.

Ms. Nelsen is widely published in the field of technology transfer and university/industry collaborations and was a CMI Fellow at the University of Cambridge with the Cambridge MIT Institute studying university/industry/government partnerships in technology transfer and local economic development. She is a co-founder of Praxis, the UK University Technology Transfer Training Programme

William Rodriguez, M.D.

William R. Rodriguez is an honors graduate of Brown University and the Yale University School of Medicine. He completed training in internal medicine and infectious disease at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where he also served as Chief Medical Resident in 1998–99. Since 2001, he has led a research program in global health at Harvard’s Partners AIDS Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He is the co-inventor of several microtechnologies for HIV diagnostics, including low-cost methods for HIV RNA and CD4 cell counting. He has served as the Director of the Office for International Programs at the Harvard Medical School Division of AIDS, and has worked on scale-up of HIV clinical and laboratory programs in the eastern Caribbean, throughout Africa, and in Vietnam, India, and China. Since 2002, he has worked with the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative, as Senior HIV Advisor, as director of the Foundation’s HIV operations research initiative, and as Chief Medical Officer. He serves as an expert consultant on HIV care, treatment, laboratory diagnostics and research in resource-poor settings for several national governments, for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and for the National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization. He has been a member of the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School since 1997, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is also the recipient the Class of 2005 First-Year Teaching Award at Harvard Medical School for excellence in teaching.

Alan Sager, Ph.D.

Alan Sager is a professor of health policy and management at the Boston University School of Public Health, where he has taught since 1983. His courses on health finance, planning, and administration have won nine awards. His main policy and research interests concern:

Financing affordable medications for all Americans while boosting incentives for breakthrough research. Identifying causes of hospital closings and methods of stabilizing needed hospitals. Crafting a health care peace treaty that combines coverage for all with cost controls—by liberating and obliging physicians to spend money carefully. Analyzing the origins, prospects, and problems facing the Massachusetts universal health care law. Designing ways to mobilize voluntary help to disabled citizens through “time banking,” a parallel economy of good deeds.

Sager holds a B.A. in economics from Brandeis and a Ph.D. in urban studies and planning from MIT.

John Swen

John Swen is Vice President of Science Policy and Public Affairs for Pfizer Global Research & Development. He co-chairs Pfizer's Research, Science Policy, and Regulatory team and also represents the R&D organization on the U.S. and Global Policy Coordinating Committees. Prior to joining Pfizer in 2001, John held a series of senior posts in the biotechnology industry, computer industry, and in government. He served for three years in Governor Lincoln Almond’s cabinet as Director of Economic Development.

Previously, John was Chief Operating Officer of Modex Therapeutiques, a Swiss biotechnology company, and served as Vice President, Development, at CytoTherapeutics where he managed the manufacturing, clinical research, development groups, and managed the business development and licensing function. Additionally, he was Worldwide Sales and Marketing Manager for I-Bus systems, a computer manufacturer in San Diego, CA, and founded Tall Trees Systems - a start-up Silicon Valley firm.

He has served on a wide variety of boards including: Modex Therapeutiques; Chairman, Quonset Davisville Management Corporation; Chairman, Providence Convention and Visitors’ Bureau; Board Member, RI Economic Policy Council; Chairman, Small Business Loan Fund; and Board Member, RI Industrial Facilities Bond Agency.

John was educated at the Boston Latin School, Columbia University, where he received a B.A. in English from Columbia College, and at MIT where he earned a M.S. degree in Management of information technology and strategy from the Sloan School.