Our Team

Executive Team - Leading the Effort Against Diseases of Poverty

Richard Chin, M.D. Chief Executive Officer, is a Board Certified Internist with extensive expertise in drug development. He has overseen over 40 Investigational New Drug (IND) Applications for new molecular entities and new indications, as well as eight New Drug Applications (NDAs)/Biologic License Applications (BLAs), and has authored a major textbook on clinical trial medicine. Dr. Chin joins One World Health from OXiGENE, where he served as President and Chief Executive Officer. Previously, Dr. Chin served as Senior Vice President and Head of Global Development for Elan Corporation, where he had worldwide responsibility for Clinical Development, Regulatory, Biostatistics, CMC, QA/Compliance, Safety and Medical Affairs. Dr. Chin has also held various clinical and scientific roles for Genentech, Inc. including Head of Clinical Research for the Biotherapeutics Unit, overseeing approximately half of the drugs at Genentech, and began his career at Procter and Gamble Pharmaceuticals, where he served as Associate Medical Director. He received a B.A. in Biology, magna cum laude, from Harvard University and the equivalent of a J.D. with honors from Oxford University in England under a Rhodes Scholarship. Dr. Chin holds a Medical Degree from Harvard Medical School and is licensed to practice medicine in California. He previously served on the Adjunct Clinical Faculty of Stanford University School of Medicine and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Genmedica, located in Barcelona, Spain.

Ahvie Herskowitz, M.D. Co-Founder & Chief Medical Officer, provides senior executive leadership to the Institute for OneWorld Health. He has extensive experience performing large-scale multinational phase II and III clinical trials. Prior to co founding iOWH Ahvie directed all multinational clinical trials at a cardiovascular research institute, including all epidemiologic and outcome studies and registries. Dr. Herskowitz has been trained in the fields of cardiology, immunology and pathology. A former Associate Professor of Medicine, Immunology and Molecular Microbiology at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Herskowitz is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Medicine at University of California, San Francisco.  He received his MD from Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Julie Cheng, General Counsel & Vice President Business Development, oversees all of OneWorld Health’s legal matters and is responsible for business development including setting up key partnerships among OneWorld Health, academia and pharmaceutical companies in different disease areas.  Her legal experience has primarily been in the corporate world, including working at the FMC Corporation and Alcon Laboratories Inc. Prior to joining OneWorld Health she spent almost seven years with Bayer HealthCare with her most recent position being Assistant General Counsel. Before that she worked in Philadelphia for Rohm and Haas Company, where her focus was on international intellectual property. Julie’s community activities have included participating on the board of the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia (PILCOP) and working with Big Brothers Big Sisters, Philadelphia Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, the West Texas Legal Services, and the AIDS Outreach Center. Julie has been involved with the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA) as well as local Asian Pacific American bar associations for several years. Julie was also a member of the ABA Special Committee on Bioethics and the Law from 2001 – 2004. Julie received her B.A. from Reed College and her J.D. from Franklin Pierce Law Center.

Raj Shankar Ghosh, M.D., Country Director, India is responsible for all operational and program services in the Liaison Field Office. He ensures that all programs are implemented with quality, accountability and measurable impact. Dr. Ghosh is also the iOWH representative in India. Dr. Ghosh has worked in the field of public health for the past 15 years. In recent years he has been directing the immunization work of PATH in India. There, he was responsible for the planning and implementation of the Japanese Encephalitis Project, the Cervical Cancer Vaccine project and other work related to primary immunization in the country. Prior to joining PATH in 2004 he worked in various parts of India particularly in the under developed districts as staff of State Health Services and the National Polio Surveillance Project of the WHO. Dr Ghosh completed his graduation in Medicine in 1988. During his career, he has obtained professional training from leading public health institutes in India including the Indian Institute of Health Management and Research and the Indian Institute of Public Health in India. Dr Ghosh has participated in generating several policy level decisions at the National and State level as member of several health committees including the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization in India. He is an avid reader and loves to listen to music, particularly folk music.

Nina Grove, M.A., M.P.H, is Vice President, Access and Delivery. She brings over 20 years biopharmaceutical leadership and implementation experience in all aspects of drug development to OneWorld Health. During 20 years at Genentech, Inc., Nina held positions in Quality Control, Product Operations, Product Development, and most recently as Director of Commercial Regulatory Affairs where she was responsible for the product launch of four new drugs over a period of 24 months for asthma, cancer, and psoriasis. Prior to joining Genentech, Nina performed laboratory research both at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Stanford University. Nina earned her BA in Biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz and her Masters in Medical Microbiology and a Masters in Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley. Her professional affiliations include the Drug Information Association, Food and Drug Law Institute, and the Regulatory Affairs Professional Society.

James Hickman, MBA, Vice President, External Affairs, brings over twenty years of experience in strategic communications, advocacy and fund development addressing health care access to the Institute for OneWorld Health. Most recently, he served as President and CEO of the St. Luke’s Hospital Foundation, where he led fund development, community benefit and external relations programs for St. Luke’s Hospital. Previously, Jim was the Bay Area Regional Director for Blue Cross of California State Sponsored Programs, a Wellpoint, Inc. subsidiary, where he was responsible for its Medi-Cal and Healthy Families managed care programs. Prior to joining Blue Cross, Jim worked at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the Clinton Administration, first as staff to the White House Working Group on Welfare Reform, and later as Special Assistant to the Office of Legislative Affairs. Jim has worked in politics at the national, state and local levels for a diverse range of causes and clients providing event management, fundraising and voter contact services.

Susan Moriconi, Vice President, Human Resources serves as a key member of the executive leadership team and provides human resources leadership and expertise to all levels of the organization in both the San Francisco and India offices. Prior to joining OneWorld Health, Susan served as Vice President of Human Resources Communications for Boston Scientific. Before that she was the Vice President Human Resources for Boston Scientific’s Western Region. Before joining Boston Scientific in 1997, Susan served in a number of roles with increasing responsibility at Hewlett Packard Company. Her last role at HP was as Health Benefits Manager. Susan has helped small and large organizations to manage growth, giving particular attention to culture, employee needs and retention of key talent. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in sociology from University of the Pacific, where she also completed coursework towards a Master’s Degree in Psychology of Stress. In addition she holds an MBA in Marketing from Santa Clara University.

Tue Nguyen, Ph.D., Vice President, Chemistry, Manufacturing and Controls (CMC), is responsible for providing strategic technical and regulatory CMC expertise to the project teams. He directs and facilitates all CMC activities related to product evaluation and development, regulatory filing, product launch, and quality assurance. Tue has over twenty years of pharmaceutical development experience with all phases of small molecule and protein formulation / drug delivery device / parenteral manufacturing process development. He has held leadership positions in Pharmaceutical Research and Development, and in Analytic Sciences at Genentech. He is a fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists and a member of several other science organizations including AAAS and PDA. Tue received his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the University of Kansas.

Senior Advisors

David Brown Ph.D., FRSC, Senior Advisor, Head of Drug Discovery, has over 30 years experience in the pharmaceutical industry both in research and in senior executive roles. He served with 4 of the top 10 Pharma companies: Zeneca, Pfizer, Glaxo, and most recently with F. Hoffman La-Roche as Global Head of Drug Discovery, Roche Pharma. In this role he had responsibility for the output of clinical candidate drugs from approximately 2000 scientists across Roche’s 5 research sites. Dr Brown has extensive experience of pharmaceutical R&D in all phases from early discovery through clinical trials, and he has experience of leading research in all major disease areas. Whilst at Pfizer he was named co-inventor on the patent for Viagra, and he led the team that developed Viagra through to proof of concept (clinical efficacy) in man. At Roche, Dr Brown also served on the committee responsible for clinical drug development and he was a core member of the Business Development Committee responsible for in-licensing of products and for technology agreements and acquisitions. Dr Brown received his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Bristol. He is an Editor-in-Chief of Current Opinion in Drug Discovery and Development, and is author of more than 50 primary and review publications and patents.

Senior Staff

Crescento Abreo, Senior Director, Quality Assurance and Compliance, is responsible for quality and compliance operations, programs and infrastructure in an international regulatory environment. Cres has three decades of international experience in biologics, vaccines, and small molecules, including 15 years of leadership expertise in implementing and directing quality systems and compliance operations. Before joining OneWorld Health Cres was Senior Director for Quality with Pharmacyclics, Inc. He also worked at Genentech for fourteen years. At Genentech he held senior positions in quality, process development and manufacturing systems. Cres received his B.S. Degree in Microbiology from the University of Bombay (St. Xavier’s College).

Cristina Cavani, Director, Human Resources, has over 20 years of office management and administration experience. She has extensive knowledge of the banking industry and financial planning. She was a business entrepreneur in San Francisco for 8 years.

Philippe Desjeux, Ph.D., M.D., Senior Program Officer of Disease Control. Dr. Desjeux brings more than three decades of experience in leishmaniasis surveillance, control and prevention to OneWorld Health, joining the team that is working to implement a paromomycin pre-launch program in Bihar, India. Dr. Desjeux previously worked as Leishmaniasis Research Coordinator for the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases of the World Health Organization (WHO/TDR). He received a medical doctorate from the University of Paris, and certificates in special studies—gastroenterology, parasitology, and systematic microbiology—from the Odeon Faculty of Medicine and the Pasteur Institute.

Helen Matzger, MPH, Director, Access Programs spent 16 months as Phase 4 Program Director based in Patna, India before returning to the iOWH San Francisco office to take on her current role. She is responsible for the planning, coordinating and implementation of access and delivery activities. Prior to joining OneWorld Health she spent eight years as a Research Investigator at UCSF working on domestic public health issues. Helen has also worked on a variety of international public health issues including jobs with Helen Keller International (Dhaka, Bangladesh) and Indian NGO's while living in India. During her tenure in South Asia, she helped coordinate a unique nationwide health and nutritional surveillance system and was responsible for analyses on the health and nutritional status of women and children. Helen graduated from UC Berkeley and received her MPH in International Health from the University of Michigan.

Kathleen J. Monroe, MBA, Director Project Management, Malaria, manages all key operational activities for the malaria team and acts as project liaison between the internal project teams, external partners and multiple collaborators. Kay also ensures progress against goals of interdisciplinary project activities for the malaria program with partners and other key stakeholders in the PDP malaria community. Prior to joining OneWorld Health, Kay was the Vice President of Operations at Lundbeck Research USA where she was responsible for all non-scientific operations in this subsidiary of the Danish pharma company. Before that she was the Director of Project Management and established Project Management Offices at several companies including; Cerus Corp, Synaptic Pharmaceutical and Dynavax Technologies. Kay has also worked in global Project Management at Genentech and is the founder of the East Bay Association for Women in Science, she served as that organizations President in 1993 and 1994. Kay has a BS in Animal Science from UC Davis and an MBA from Golden Gate University.

Bao Nguyen, Senior Director, Information Technology, is an expert in networking, client servers, web based system development and clinical trial data management. He has worked on the design and implementation of large scale clinical trials for over a decade, overseeing data management systems for epidemiological and clinical research studies at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health and the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network at the Centers for Disease Control.

Rhonda Sarnoff, Dr.P.H., Director of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) and Field Research, brings over twenty-five years of experience in the U.S. and internationally in health program management and evaluation. She has also conducted policy research on access to health services and insurance coverage among underserved populations in the U.S. and Africa. During her thirteen years of professional experience in Sub-Sahara Africa, she worked with NGOs on the implementation of national nutrition surveillance systems, the supervision and evaluation of maternal and child health programs, and the design and implementation of disaster interventions. She conducted applied research with John Snow Inc. on the impact of health care financing reforms on access to health services. She also consulted with UNICEF and FAO in Africa on the design and evaluation of health and nutrition programs. Rhonda received her Dr.P.H. from the University of California at Berkeley and her M.S.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Raj Singh, M.D., D.P.H., Phase 4 Program Director, is responsible for the tactical planning, coordinating and implementation of the Phase 4 activities for field research and the Phase 4 Program in India. Prior to joining OneWorld Health, Dr. Singh consulted for the World Health Organization for close to 10 years. In that time he facilitated National TB Programme management in the areas of DOTS Expansion including: resource mobilization, program evaluation, TB laboratory strengthening, project management and establishment of systems for the management of drug-resistant TB. Before that he was on the faculty at KEM Medical College in Bombay. Dr. Singh received his medical degree from Orissa and Post Graduate degree in Preventive and Social Medicine from the University of Bombay and also has a degree in Public Health. He was the Charter Chairman of Ranchi Anchorage Round Table, a service organization which works for providing education to under privileged children.

Katherine Woo, Ph.D., Senior Director, Corporate Partnering and Portfolio Development, evaluates drug leads and technologies submitted by universities and companies for potential partnership opportunities. She has more than ten years of experience in biomedical research and research management that spans the fields of development neuroscience, addiction, infectious diseases and entrepreneurship. Most recently, she developed an initiative to encourage public-private collaboration in the rapid translation of research into new HIV therapeutics. Dr. Woo received her Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology, and Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees from Cornell University.