Senior Management
John E. Bailye President and CEO
John Bailye was named President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for EKR Therapeutics in July 2010. He joined the company in September 2009 as Executive Chairman. Since assuming this leadership role, John has helped lead EKR Therapeutics to a number of significant achievements including:
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- Building a senior management team designed to deliver growth in a challenging environment; this leadership team offers a combination of pharmaceutical expertise and entrepreneurial spirit focused on helping EKR achieve its full potential.
- Motivating and cultivating an experienced field force of sales professionals, along with experts in customer service and medical education, to further EKR's role as the leading provider of acute-care specialty products.
- Perpetuating EKR's tradition of commercializing products to address unmet and undersatisfied medical needs, while enhancing the therapeutic value of acute-care products. This effort will be seen again with the relaunch of Retavase® in early 2013.
- Leveraging EKR's relationship with scientific thought leaders who are utilizing clinical platforms to create evidence-based rationale for using EKR products in the acute-care setting.
- Embracing new technology through implementation of Mobile Intelligence™ on the iPad for EKR's sales force and introduction of field-based analytics and clinical communication tools, leading to more productive interactions with healthcare providers.
Previously, John founded, chaired, and served as CEO of Dendrite, a pioneer in the development of software applications for pharmaceutical sales force management. Under his leadership, Dendrite grew from a start-up company in 1987 to a firm that achieved annual sales of more than $420 million in 2006. In May 2007, Dendrite was sold for nearly $800 million. At that time Dendrite was a publicly traded global company that employed nearly 3,000 people in approximately 26 countries, and its client base included the world's top 20 pharmaceutical companies.
Originally from Australia, John has been a leading supporter of entrepreneurship and technology growth in New Jersey, having served as a founding member of the New Jersey Technology Council. He received the Golden Door Award from the NJ International Institute and was twice honored with Ernst & Young's New Jersey Software and Technology Entrepreneur of the Year
®: award. In 2003, Business Review Weekly named him as one of the top 20 influential Australians in the United States. John is a graduate of the University of New South Wales. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree in finance, marketing, and business.
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Bill McKee Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer
Bill McKee was named Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for EKR Therapeutics in July 2010. He joined EKR after a 15-year career with Barr Pharmaceuticals — a leading specialty pharmaceutical company acquired by Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Limited in 2008. His last position at Barr was Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. In that role, he had overall responsibility for the oversight and management of Barr's global Finance, Treasury, Tax, IT, and Security departments. During his tenure, Barr grew from a US-based generic pharmaceutical company with $60 million in revenue to a global, specialty pharmaceutical company with revenues of over $2.8 billion.
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Bill joined Barr in January 1995 as Director of Finance and was elected Corporate Treasurer in March 1995. He was named Chief Financial Officer in 1997 and promoted to Senior Vice President in 1999 and Executive Vice President in 2007.
Bill received a Bachelor's of Business Administration from the University of Notre Dame and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the NJ State CPA Society, and the NJ chapter of Financial Executives International. He also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Auxilium Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AUXL), a specialty biopharmaceutical company.
<lessBryan Stuart Chief of Corporate Development
Bryan Stuart is the Chief of Corporate Development for EKR Therapeutics. Prior to joining EKR in June 2011, he was one of the first members of the management team at Ovation Pharmaceuticals, where he led the business development and corporate development functions. Ovation was a biopharmaceutical company focused on the acquisition, development, and commercialization of therapies targeted toward specialty markets and rare diseases with high unmet medical needs. Ovation's management team partnered with the private equity firm GTCR Golder Rauner in 2002. Through a series of product and company acquisitions (13 separate transactions), Ovation grew into a fully integrated, international pharmaceutical business and was sold to Lundbeck A/S in 2009 for $900 million.
Prior to Ovation, Bryan worked as a healthcare investment banker for William Blair & Company. He holds a B.S. in Finance with high honors from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an M.B.A. from the J.L. Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Susan C. Bacso Senior Vice President, Operations & Supply
Susan Bacso returns to EKR after having taken a one-year leave to serve abroad as Director, Quality Assurance and Control for Becton Dickinson. She possesses over 20 years of pharmaceutical experience including having served as Vice President of Operations and Supply for EKR Therapeutics with responsibilities for all aspects of manufacturing, technology transfer, supply chain, quality, and regulatory assurance affairs related to the production and movement of product. Earlier in her career, Sue worked at Merck & Co. where she advanced to positions of increasing responsibility including Manufacturing Area Head and Divisional Capital Project Leader. She then served as Senior Director of Quality Assurance and Technical Operations for ESP Pharma and then as Senior Operations Executive for ESP Equity Partners, LLC, a private investment company and one of the original institutional investors in EKR. Sue received a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Northeastern University and also holds a B.S. degree in Physical Geography, Environmental Science from McGill University.
Jon Zwinski Senior Vice President, Sales
Jon Zwinski was named Senior Vice President, Sales, for EKR Therapeutics in August 2010. He had served as Vice President of National Accounts since 2008. This position included responsibility for trade relations, contracting with national GPOs and hospitals, as well as providing strategic counsel to senior management on all contracting and trade initiatives. His first position at EKR Therapeutics was Senior Director of National Accounts, responsible for managing the relationship with all wholesaler customers as well as a portion of EKR's GPO customers. Jon came to EKR Therapeutics from PDL BioPharma where he served as Associate Director Corporate Accounts, responsible for GPO account management and trade relations. While at PDL BioPharma, Jon acquired significant sales experience and received the CEO Circle award — the highest level of achievement and recognition within PDL BioPharma's sales organization. Jon joined PDL in 2005 after an 11-year career at Organon. He spent the majority of his time at Organon serving in various sales positions of increasing responsibility — including specialty sales representative, district manager, and senior district manager. He was cited for consistent sales achievement and was a two-time District Manager of the Year. He is a 1989 graduate of Bowling Green State University in Ohio.