Business Leaders
- Timothy Rothwell
Chairman, sanofi-aventis U.S.
Tim Rothwell is Chairman of sanofi-aventis U.S., an affiliate of the sanofi-aventis Group, one of the world leaders in the pharmaceutical industry. He has held this position since February 2007. In addition to his role as Chairman, Mr. Rothwell is responsible for Communications and Federal Governmental Relations for sanofi-aventis in the U.S. Between September 2004 and February 2007, he was President and CEO of sanofi-aventis U.S. and was responsible for all U.S. commercial operations, including the United States and Puerto Rico, as well as coordination of Industrial Affairs and R&D activities within the U.S.
Mr. Rothwell has 35 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Prior to leading sanofi-aventis U.S., he served as President and CEO of Sanofi-Synthelabo, Inc., which he joined in May 2003. Before joining Sanofi-Synthelabo, he served in various capacities at Pharmacia, including as President of the company’s Global Prescription Business and as Executive Vice President of Pharmacia Corporation.
Prior to Pharmacia, Mr. Rothwell was worldwide President of Rhone-Poulenc Rorer Pharmaceuticals (RPR) and President of RPR’s Global Pharmaceutical Operations. Mr. Rothwell joined RPR in January 1995 as Executive Vice President, RPR, and President, Pharmaceutical Operations.
Mr. Rothwell began his career at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in 1972 in the legal department, subsequently moving into sales and marketing positions. He assumed increasing responsibility in various management positions at Sandoz, including Chief Operating Officer.
In 1989, Mr. Rothwell joined the Squibb Corporation as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales for the U.S. In 1991, he moved to Burroughs Wellcome where he was appointed Vice President, Global Marketing and Sales. He then returned to Sandoz Pharmaceuticals from 1992 to 1995, and was named Chief Executive Officer.
Mr. Rothwell holds a Bachelor of Arts from Drew University and a law degree from Seton Hall University. In 1986, Mr. Rothwell served as President of the New Jersey Intellectual Property Association. Presently, he serves on the PhRMA Board of Directors, the Institute of Medicine’s Evidence-Based Medicine roundtable, the CEO Roundtable on Cancer, the Healthcare Businesswomen's Association Advisory Board, the Board of Trustees for the Somerset Medical Center Foundation, the Board of Trustees for the HealthCare Institute of New Jersey and the Board of Visitors for Seton Hall Law School. Mr. Rothwell is a Trustee of the Corporate Council for America's Children at the Children's Health Fund. He also sits on a number of community foundations and other councils.
- Mark Galant
Chairman, GAIN Capital Group
The founder of GAIN Capital Group, Mark Galant served as chief executive officer of the Company from its inception in October, 1999 until June, 2007. Mr. Galant's strategic vision and entrepreneurial energy propelled the firm from concept to a market leader in the rapidly growing and highly competitive online forex industry. Under his leadership, the firm achieved top line growth of 65% or more for six consecutive years (2001-2006).
Prior to forming GAIN Capital, Mr. Galant was the number two executive at FNX Limited, an international provider of trading and risk management systems. During his six year tenure, Mr. Galant was instrumental in transforming FNX into a world-class software and services firm and, according to Inc. Magazine, one of the 500 fastest-growing companies in the U.S. in 1996, 1997 and 1998. Before joining FNX in 1994, Mr. Galant served as global head of foreign exchange options trading at Credit Suisse. There, he expanded a small regional operation into one of the world's largest and most respected global foreign exchange options trading organizations, trading $4 billion per day. Prior to Credit Suisse, he ran the foreign exchange options desk at Chemical Bank. He also traded all financial products as a money manager for Paul Tudor Jones at Tudor Investment Corporation. During his early years on Wall Street, Mr. Galant was a floor trader, successfully trading his own account on several of New York's commodities exchanges.
In 2008, he founded the Galant Center for Entrepreneurship with the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia and is a member of the University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce Advisory Board. Mr. Galant also serves on the board of directors of Scivantage and TraderTools, Inc. Mr. Galant holds a BS in Finance from the University of Virginia and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is co-author of the book, "Currency Trading for Dummies," a plain-English guide to the ins and outs of trading the foreign exchange market.
- Ronald A. Berg
Chief Executive Officer, RadPharm
Mr. Berg serves as President and Chief Executive Officer for RadPharm Inc. He is a member of the Board of Directors and is responsible for the overall management and strategic direction of the company. He joined RadPharm in January 2002 as Chief Operating Officer and assumed his current roles in 2005 when the Company was sold to a private equity firm.
Mr. Berg has extensive experience leading entrepreneurial, forward-thinking organizations in the technology and pharmaceutical and professional services industries. Prior to joining RadPharm, he held the position of Vice President with Idealab!, a creator and operator of technology businesses, where he helped establish the New York office of this Pasadena, CA based company. While at idealab!, Mr. Berg was instrumental in launching Partsearch Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of industry-standard solutions for replacement parts and accessories (www.partsearch.com).
Before this, Mr. Berg was the Chief Financial Officer of Deja.com, which provided a searchable archive of messages posted to Usenet discussion groups and later a comparison shopping engine. The archive was subsequently sold to Google and reintroduced as Google Groups and the comparison shopping engine was sold to eBay.
He joined Infonautics, Inc. in 1995 as its fourth employee. Infonautics, Inc. wasone of the first online information services company. Its best known product was 'Electric Library', to which nearly a third of the libraries and K-12 schools in the United States subscribed, a core reference tool for students of all ages. Mr Berg served as Chief Financial Officer, taking the company public is 1996, making it one of the first 'internet' companies to successfully complete an IPO.
Before joining Infonautics, Mr. Berg joined a venture backed information systems company in 1989, which was sold to Ziff-Davis in 1992, where he spent the next three years.
Since Mr. Berg’s career in managing venture backed businesses began in 1989, he has been a key participant is raising over $125 million which created more than 1,000 full time jobs. Mr. Berg has and continues to invest in and provide advisory services to a number of early stage companies, the best known being half.com – which was sold to eBay a few months after its launch in 2000.
Mr. Berg began his career spending eight years with Coopers & Lybrand, now known as PricewaterhouseCoopers. An accomplished professional, he was named a finalist for The New Jersey Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2008 Award.
Mr. Berg holds a B.S.B.A from Bucknell University. Mr. Berg lives in West Windsor with his wife Barbara, and his children Jason and Alison.
Research Leaders
- Aiguo Wang, Ph.D.
Vice President, Reconstructive Technologies Stryker Orthopaedics
Aiguo Wang is Vice President, Reconstructive Technologies, of Stryker Orthopaedics, one of the global leaders in the medical device industry. He is responsible for the research and development of advanced technological solutions to the reconstructive joint replacement businesses at Stryker Orthopaedics. His research interests and expertise are in experimental and computational biomechanics, tribology, advanced bearing surfaces and biological bone-implant fixation. He has published about 200 papers and abstracts in scientific and clinical journals and conference proceedings. He holds 10 US patents and has 12 patent applications pending at the present time.
Dr. Wang joined Stryker Orthopaedics as a Sr. Research Engineer in 1991. His discovery of the orientation softening phenomenon in linear polymers under multi-directional motion led to the development and worldwide applications of highly crosslinked ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene in total joint arthroplasty. His pioneering research on the molecular interactions between proteins and bearing surfaces established the validity and credibility of laboratory joint simulation for predicting clinical wear outcomes of advanced bearing technologies. He was awarded Stryker Corporation’s Best Invention Awards in 2003, 2004 and 2006. In 2005, he received the Achievement of Excellence Award from Stryker Orthopaedics for his breakthrough discovery of a sequential irradiation and annealing principle and its successful application to the invention and development of Stryker’s second generation of highly crosslinked polyethylene technology – X3®.
Prior to joining Stryker Orthopaedics, Dr. Wang conducted basic research on aerospace super-alloys and tribology of composite materials at Clemson University as a Postdoctoral Research Associate between 1988 and 1991. He was awarded a National Science Foundation Grant Award in 1991 for his research on metal matrix composite materials.
Dr. Wang holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree from China University of Mining and Technology and a Ph.D. degree in Materials Science from Cambridge University. He has been a Visiting Professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University since 2005 and a Research Professor at China University of Mining and Technology since 2003. Between 2005 and 2007, he served as Chairman of the International Conferences on Wear of Materials. Presently, he serves on the Editorial Boards of WEAR and Tribology International. He has been married for 21 years with a 16 year-old son.
- Dr. Jemo Kang
President & CEO, Princeton BioMeditech Corporation
Dr. Jemo Kang, 68, earned his Ph.D. degree in the field of Chemistry and Bio-Organic Chemistry having gone through education and training at the University of Pittsburgh and Yale University in the early 1970s.
Dr. Kang entered into his professional career working as a research scientist, and then R&D Director, at major U.S. corporations prior to founding Princeton BioMeditech Corporation (PBM) in Princeton, New Jersey in the late 1980s. Dr. Kang serves as President and CEO of PBM. He has developed and patented several key technologies in the medical diagnostic field, which have made major contributions to revolutionizing the practice of medical professionals and self testing around the world by enabling the simple and rapid diagnosis of patients at the Point of Care.
PBM today manufactures over 60 different FDA approved products and continues to pioneer the introduction of many new products.
Dr. Kang is also a co-founder of the Korean Institute of Princeton (KIP) and has served as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the last 11 years. KIP operates under the charter of educating Korean Americans in the greater Princeton, New Jersey area. KIP’s main mission is to nurture in our children a deep-rooted self-esteem as Korean Americans, so that they can freely and vigorously pursue happiness and goals in life, making valuable contributions to society and to our country. Dr. Kang is also a member of the Foundation Board of the new University Medical Center at Princeton. He has also founded LifeCare Foundation to support the education of prominent young scientists in the life science field.
He has co-authored over 50 patents and publications.
Dr. Kang lives in Princeton with his wife, Hojin and younger son, Roger. His older son, Walter, also lives in Princeton with his wife, JungAh, and two children, Audrey Jina and David Joonsung.
- Philip R. Goode, Ph.D.
Distinguised Professor, Physics, N.J.I.T.
Philip R. Goode, PhD, distinguished professor of physics at NJIT and director of the Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research is leading the project to build the world’s most capable solar telescope at Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO), Big Bear Lake, CA. Goode has been director of BBSO since NJIT took over the facility from California Institute of Technology in 1997. Cal Tech developed the site in 1969.
BBSO’s new solar telescope will be a 1.6 meter clear aperture, off-axis telescope featuring the world’s largest solar aperture. Spring of 2008 has been slated to bring first light. The telescope will feed the high-order adaptive optics system, which in turn will feed the next generation of technologies for measuring magnetic fields and dynamic events using visible AND infrared light. The new instrument also features a parallel computer system for real-time image enhancement.
Goode has years of experience studying the Sun’s atmosphere (called helioseismology) in addition to his studies of magnetic fields. Goode is expert at combining BBSO ground-based data with satellite data to determine dynamic properties of the solar magnetic fields. Goode’s other areas of interest include working to place a lower limit on solar irradiance and to probe the solar interior. Such studies bear greatly on scientists’ understanding and ability to predict 'space weather.'
In recent years, industry, government and scientists have begun placing increasing attention upon space weather to learn more about which solar magnetic storms can have deleterious effects on satellites, the terrestrial power grid and telecommunications.
Since 1998, Goode’s research has also focused on climate studies in which the Earth’s large-scale reflectance has been measured using the earthshine. He and BBSO researchers have also spent time modeling the Earth’s reflectivity using satellite cloud cover and found appreciable decadal variation of reflectance due to cloud changes. BBSO is building a global network to measure the Earth’s global reflectance and spectrum.
In fall 2007 Goode received the NJIT Excellence in Research Award from NJIT’s College of Science and Liberal Arts. Goode also recently received the university’s first NJIT Board of Overseers Excellence in Research Prize and Medal. The awards are presented in recognition of a sustained record of contributions that have enhanced NJIT’s reputation.
Goode has played a major role increasing the strength of the university’s solar physics program, which has trained 24 current and past post-doctoral fellows. Twelve of these Fellows now hold faculty/national center tenure track positions. The observatory, itself, has also flourished in size and stature. Staff has expanded from 4 to 40 individuals and the annual budget, supported solely by competitive federal grants, has risen from under $500,000 in 1997 to more than $5 million today. Goode received his AB from the University of California at Berkeley and his PhD from Rutgers University.
Government Awardee
- Hon. David Socolow
Commissioner NJ Dept of Labor & Workforce Development
David J. Socolow, Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development, leads a staff of 3,600 public servants dedicated to promoting economic growth and job creation by providing crucial services to the workers and employers of the state.
The department works to further the development of New Jersey’s world-class workforce through the statewide One-Stop Career Center system; provides almost $3 billion per year in vital income security to workers who are unemployed or unable to work due to illness, accident, or injury; equitably enforces New Jersey’s labor laws and standards; analyzes the state’s labor market and demographic information; helps disabled individuals succeed in the workplace, and protects the health and safety of workers on the job.
Prior to being appointed to lead the department by Governor Jon S. Corzine on January 17, 2006, Mr. Socolow had led the department’s Unemployment Insurance program since 2002, managing more than 1000 employees. During that time, he promoted initiatives to make New Jersey’s unemployment insurance system more responsive while improving customer service using advanced technology, including eliminating the waiting week for unemployment insurance benefits and implementing automatic filing for federal extended benefits.
Since taking the helm at the department, Commissioner Socolow played a key role in crafting New Jersey’s Family Leave Insurance program, which Governor Corzine signed into law on May 2, 2008. Starting in July 2009, the legislation will extend the state's existing Temporary Disability Insurance (TDI) program to provide up to six weeks of insurance benefits for workers taking leave to bond with a newborn or newly-adopted child or to provide care for an immediate family member with a serious health condition.
Commissioner Socolow also is taking a leadership role in Governor Corzine’s multi-agency approach to prevent employers from misclassifying their employees as independent contractors or paying unreported cash wages. Such employers undercut their law-abiding competitors and reduce their business costs by evading taxes and shirking their duty to provide social insurance for their workers, including unemployment and temporary disability insurance and workers’ compensation insurance.
Under Commissioner Socolow’s direction, the Department has targeted New Jersey’s Customized Training Program to support the development of more competitive workers and businesses in key economic sectors in support of Governor Corzine’s Economic Growth Strategy, including a special focus on basic skills literacy grants to incumbent workers and enhanced promotion of apprenticeship training.
In addition, Commissioner Socolow has worked with the Legislature to update New Jersey’s Prevailing Wage Act with stronger enforcement tools, and he chairs the New Jersey Minimum Wage Advisory Commission, which recommended in its first annual report an increase in the state’s minimum wage and an annual cost-of-living increase indexed to inflation.
Mr. Socolow previously worked at the U.S. Department of Labor as Senior Advisor to the Deputy Secretary. He also served on Capitol Hill as Chief of Staff to Congressman Robert Andrews of New Jersey, a senior member of the House Committee on Education and the Labor. Additionally, Mr. Socolow was a legislative representative for the national AFL-CIO.
He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and his Master’s degree in Public Administration from Rutgers University. Mr. Socolow was raised in central New Jersey and currently resides in Moorestown with his wife and two children.
Academia Awardee
- David Finegold, Ph.D.
Dean, School of Management & Labor Relations, Rutgers - The State University
Prof. David Finegold is the Dean of the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, a world-leading source of expertise on the changing nature of work, building effective organizations and the changing employment relationship. Prof. Finegold’s work focuses on understanding and comparing education and training systems and how they related to economic performance. He is the developer of the low-skill equilibrium and high-skill ecosystem frameworks. Since joining Rutgers in Fall 2007, Prof. Finegold has led efforts to build a bioscience cluster in central New Jersey (www.bio-one.org) and to develop a new statewide set of Professional Science Master’s (PSM) degrees to develop leaders who can integrate science and business for the bioscience industry. Prior to joining Rutgers, Dr. Finegold was a professor at the Keck Graduate Institute in Claremont, CA, where he was the first management professor, and created the business and ethics curriculum for this pioneering PSM program. and at USC’s Marshall School of Business. He is the author of more than 70 journal articles and book chapters and has written or edited six books, including Are Skills the Answer? (with Colin Crouch and Mario Sako, 1999), Corporate Boards: Adding Value at the Top (with Jay Conger and Ed Lawler) and BioIndustry Ethics (Elsevier Academic Press, 2005). He consults and provides executive education and coaching to public and private sector organizations on issues about skill development, talent management and employee development, corporate governance, integrating ethics into strategic decision-making, and designing effective organizations. In 2006, he was a special advisor to the British Government on an Atlantic Fellowship, working on a national skills strategy through the year 2020 for the Leitch Review.
"Making a Difference" Award
- Trenton High School West
Novo Nordisk Legal Mentoring Program
Five years ago, attorneys at Novo Nordisk Inc. in Princeton initiated a mentoring partnership with the Legal Learning Academy of Trenton High School West. Each year 10 sophomores are accepted into the program. The students visit the office each month, during which time they are provided with various types of enrichment, such as, e.g., skills programs (writing and presenting, interviewing, etc), moot court opportunities, and contact with lawyers, both in-house Novo Nordisk lawyers as well as distinguished attorneys from outside the company, who work in various disciplines and settings.
Three years ago, the junior class set up a peer mediation program at Trenton High School and subsequent classes have continued working with attorneys on this project. In addition, when entering the program each students is given a computer and are supported in various ways in preparation for college. The program has proven to be a valuable experience to both mentors and students.