Our Team

My career

My business and legal career started with technology transactions and patents about the time that the Supreme Court said that living organisms could be patented. Launched in part by that decision, the evolving biopharma industry has been a great inspiration and an innovation classroom for me and many others. I have played and supported the business development role for several highly innovative enterprises, and I have consulted extensively on IP strategies for the pipeline products of a major pharmaceutical company. I was the founding director of the NIH Office of Technology Transfer during its early implementation of the Federal Technology Transfer Act. Also, I’ve had the privilege of serving a wide variety of clients as a senior partner at a major law firm and now in my current solo law practice. I have advised private and public businesses as well as major academic institutions and not-for-profit biomedical research institutes, in the U.S. as well as in Europe and Asia. I was fortunate to have an opportunity to expand my business skill set as the general counsel of the Venter Institute for genomic research. Today, as a welcome compliment to my law and consulting career, I’m an adjunct instructor for the Biotechnology Masters program at the Johns Hopkins University. Teaching courses in “Managing Innovation in the Life Sciences,” “Legal Aspects of Biotechnology” and “Technology Transfer” — and have enjoyed very rewarding interactions with students in the program. I founded Innovation Matters as a way to help others learn from my experience and leverage their own work.