Team

Dr Wellisch is a medical doctor and molecular biologist by training and has a Masters of Public Health in Biostatistics and Epidemiology. He began his career at the National Institutes of Health as part of the Post-Baccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award. He trained in Pain Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine where he enjoyed the early part of his academic career. Dr. Wellisch is a distinguished researcher, educator, mentor, and practicing clinician and currently serves as Director of Pain Medicine at Stamford Health and the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) Spine Center in Connecticut. He is Assistant Professor of Clinical Anesthesiology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons and takes pride in teaching and mentoring the medical students and resident physicians. He also has served as principal investigator on multiple large multicenter trials and is recognized as a key opinion leader in the field of Pain Medicine. Dr. Wellisch has held several leadership roles at his national medical society, the North American Neuromodulation Society (NANS). He has provided research, advisory, and collaborative expertise to leading pharmaceutical, medical device, and medtech companies, including Bausch Health, Bioness, Boston Scientific, Medtronic, Doximity, and Upside Health.

Early in his career, he co-founded Tysam Networks, a pioneering social networking platform that merged with EQAL in 2008 and was subsequently acquired by Everyday Health in 2012.

Since April 2025, Mr. Kornfeld has served as a portfolio manager at Franklin Venture Partners, the private investment arm of Franklin Templeton. Previously he was Chief Strategy Officer of Joyous PBC, a tele-health company focused on mental health. Mr. Kornfeld had served as a partner at Castle Peak Partners LLC, an investment firm from 2020-2025. Mr. Kornfeld serves as a Board Observer of Lark Health, an AI powered platform for managing chronic diseases. Mr. Kornfeld was previously Portfolio Manager, Research Analyst and Health Care Sector Team Leader for Franklin Templeton Investments from January 2001 until February 2020; and was a Co-Manager of the Franklin Biotechnology Discovery Fund since 2015. Mr. Kornfeld had previously served as a Lead and Co-Manager on several portfolios at Franklin. Mr. Kornfeld received an M.B.A. from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a bachelor’s degree from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Kornfeld is also a CFA charter holder.

Betsy Schmitt is a seasoned marketing and strategy professional with 30 years experience with large tech players (Google, Intuit, Microsoft, and HP) and emerging startups. Her strength is in assimilating customer and market data to build, launch and grow new products, services, and marketing programs based on customer needs. She has extensive experience in generating strategic insights (mostly by talking to a lot of people, listening well and weaving together themes and data points), building a shared vision across multiple stakeholders, and creating customer-forward programs to capitalize on those insights. The result of her efforts create effective marketing programs that acquire, engage, and grow existing customer’s loyalty and spend.

Betsy holds a B.A. in Political Science and Art History from Wellesley College and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University where she was President of Women in Management. Betsy started a non-profit that provides counseling and resources for disadvantaged returning to school.

Chinmay Kommuru is an experienced Healthcare and Life Sciences executive with over a decade of industry experience. He has delivered Strategy, Commercial, and Investment related recommendations for US and European clients, including go-to-market strategy, portfolio optimization, commercial launch strategy, and investment recommendations following detailed Due Diligences.

He has worked with Pharmaceuticals, Biotechnologies, and Medical Device clients, spanning a wide range of Therapeutic Areas, including Oncology, Neurology, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Cardiovascular Diseases, Bleeding, Weight-Loss, and Rare Diseases.

His prior roles include serving as a Principal at PA Consulting Group and helping lead innovation spinouts at MIT’s Center for Biomedical Innovation. Chinmay also brings Payer experience, having spent several years at Cigna Healthcare where he led multi-year Payer – Provider strategies. He is the CEO of Aayaam Bio, a Management Consultancy that delivers strategic solutions for Healthcare and Life Sciences companies.

Laurent Valosek has 35 years of experience as an entrepreneur, educator, and researcher. He served as CEO of 3 tech start-up companies and led a strategy management consultancy.

He is the CEO of Peak Leadership Institute and the Executive Director of the Center for Wellness and Achievement in Education, a 501c3 nonprofit that provides wellness programs to schools. Over the last 18 years, he has worked with over 15,000 leaders, educators, students, and managers.

Until 2020, Bob Molinari was the founding  CEO of Retrotope, Inc., a company focused on control of metabolic processes associated with diseases of degeneration and ageing.

For a dozen years, he led Retrotope from the idea stage to a company pioneering a completely new treatment paradigm for intractable neurodegenerative diseases.  Under Dr. Molinari’s leadership, Retrotope raised some $50MM in funding, validated the drug target and first drug compound in a host of orphan neurological diseases, and demonstrated in controlled human trials disease-modifying treatment of the fatal neurodegenerative diseases, Infantile Neuroaxonal Dystrophy and Friedreich’s ataxia. Retrotope has dosed patients successfully in diseases as diverse as Parkinson’s disease, tauopathies, synucleinopathies, Huntington’s disease, Late Onset Tay Sachs, ALS, and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy parkinsonism. Dr. Molinari is a member of the American Academy of Neurologists.

Prior to Retrotope, Dr. Molinari specialized in biotechnology reagents, genomics, proteomics, and biopharmaceutical research companies. He was the founding CEO of Coda Genomics/Verdezyne, a synthetic biology company using computational methods to optimize gene assembly in synthetic biology processes.  Bob was also the co-founding CEO and president of Protogene Laboratories, Inc., and, in the mid-nineties, led that company to become the world’s largest supplier of custom DNA before it was acquired by Life Technologies, Inc.   He then ran a spin-off of Protogene which developed foundational products and technologies in the early DNA chip industry. Prior to Protogene, Bob served as a strategic advisor in the startup of Nanogen, Affymetrix, and Sequenom. Early in his career, Dr. Molinari was a consultant specializing in biotechnology at McKinsey & Co. Dr. Molinari has an A.B. and an MBA from Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. in biophysical chemistry from Brown University.