Kenneth West
Mr. West's background includes 25 years of business development and market development experience in the medical device, specialty materials, veterinary, and information technology fields for both entrepreneurial and large companies. He began his career with FMC Corporation where he was Director of Marketing and Business Development for a $60 million division that supplied a variety of excipient products to the pharmaceutical industry.
Mr. West also has held senior management positions at three start-up companies, including Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Business Development at Embrex, Inc. a drug delivery company that eventually went public and was acquired by Pfizer, COO at VetInsite, an information technology company that was recently acquired by MediMedia, and Biolex, a transgenic protein company, where he was a founder and the firm’s first President and COO. To date, Biolex has raised in excess of $100 million in venture capital, employs more than 100 people and has established a number of research and development collaborations with major pharmaceutical companies including Bayer, J&J and Centocor.
Since 1999, Mr. West has been a consultant, working on business development projects for a variety of clients in the life sciences field. He specializes in transatlantic strategic partnering, licensing, market development, business planning and merger and acquisition services to clients in the medical device, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology industries.
Mr. West holds a B.S. degree in chemical engineering from Cornell University and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania where he specialized in strategic planning. Mr. West has been a Director of several venture-backed Life Sciences firms and has been active in the Council of Entrepreneurial Development in North Carolina, speaking and teaching on start-up ventures, patent management and financing.
