Team

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.

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.

Steven Kornfeld is a seasoned investment professional and strategic advisor with three decades of experience in capital allocation, capital markets, governance, strategy, and risk management. In addition to Castle Peak, Steven serves as a Board Observer of Lark Health, an AI powered platform for managing chronic diseases. Steven also serves as an independent director of Forte Biosciences (NASDAQ: FBRX), where he chairs the Compensation Committee and the Nominating & Governance Committee and serves on the Audit Committee.

Until February 2020, Steven served as a Vice President, Portfolio Manager, Research Analyst and Sector Team Leader for Franklin Templeton Investments, where he worked since 2001. Steven led the US equity health care investment research team, allocating up to $10 billion in investments in the biopharmaceutical and health care services industries. In this role, he regularly spoke with C- Suite executives to evaluate strategy, culture, and business trends to support capital allocation decisions. Steven holds a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University where he was on the Dean’s List. Steven is a CFA charterholder and completed Harvard University’s Behavioral Finance Seminar – Capitalizing on Irrational Investment Practices (2007).