Appoints Christian Schade as Executive Chairman and Graeme Bell as Interim CEO
BOSTON, Jan. 16, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Valo Health, Inc (“Valo”), a technology company focused on utilizing large scale data and artificial intelligence (“AI”) driven computation to discover and develop therapeutics, today announced the appointment of Christian Schade as the newly-created role of Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors and Graeme Bell as interim CEO, effective immediately.
Schade has served as a Board Director for Valo Health since September 2023, a role he took on after joining Flagship Pioneering as Growth Partner in January 2023. Bell has served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Valo since 2020, and has assumed numerous operational responsibilities during his time with the company, including as Chief People Officer. Bell succeeds David Berry, M.D., Ph. D., who has served as CEO of Valo Health since its launch by Flagship Pioneering in 2019 and whose last day of employment is February 2.
“Chris and Graeme have made tremendous contributions to Valo during their tenure, and the Board of Directors is confident they are the right leaders for Valo’s future,” said Paul Biondi, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Valo Health, and Executive Partner, Flagship Pioneering. “I look forward to working with Chris, Graeme and the entire leadership team to continue Valo’s mission to use large scale human-centric data to develop better therapeutics faster.”
“In addition to his tenure as CFO, Graeme has become integral to the operations of Valo, making him the ideal person to lead the company as CEO,” added Schade. “I look forward to continuing to partner with Graeme, the Board of Directors, and Valo’s team to progress our vision of transforming the drug discovery and development process using proprietary and differentiated human-centric data and AI-driven computation for the ultimate benefit of patients.”
“The tremendously talented team at Valo and the organization’s deep commitment to our mission have inspired me since joining the company,” added Bell. “I look forward to taking the company forward, realizing the potential of Opal, our computational platform, to speed up drug discovery and development both within Valo and with our partners.”
About Christian S. Schade
Christian S. Schade has more than 30 years of private and public pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry experience, as well as broad corporate finance expertise from his tenure in investment banking. Prior to Flagship, he served as the Chairman and CEO of Aprea Therapeutics Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company. Prior to Aprea, Schade’s previous roles include CEO of Novira (acquired by Johnson & Johnson), Executive Vice President (EVP) and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Omthera Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (acquired by AstraZeneca Plc), EVP and CFO at NRG Energy Inc., and Senior Vice President of Administration and CFO at Medarex, Inc. (acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb). Before Medarex, Schade served as Managing Director at Merrill Lynch in London and held various corporate finance and capital markets positions in New York and London for both Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan Chase & Co. Schade currently serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of Omega Therapeutics, Inc., Alltrna Therapeutics and serves on the Boards of Ring Therapeutics, and Integra LifeSciences Inc., where he chairs the Audit and Finance Committees.
About Graeme Bell
Graeme Bell has served as Valo’s Chief Financial Officer since August 2020 and, since October 2022, Valo’s Chief People Officer. He has a distinguished 30-year career as a financial executive in the biopharmaceutical sector with a broad range of experience successfully driving strategic financial operations. Previously, Bell was Chief Financial Officer at Tmunity Therapeutics, Inc., a private clinical-stage biotherapeutics company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from September 2018 to June 2020. Prior to Tmunity, Bell served as Chief Financial Officer of Intellia Therapeutics, Inc. from December 2016 to August 2018. Bell was also Chief Financial Officer and Chief People Officer at Anacor Pharmaceuticals, Inc. from June 2015 to November 2016. From 1993 until May 2015, Bell served in a number of positions of increasing responsibility at Merck & Co., Inc., including Country Chief Financial Officer, U.S. Human Health from 2010 to May 2015, Global Pharmaceutical Franchises Controller from October 2009 to July 2010, Country Chief Financial Officer, U.K. from 2008 to 2009, and Global Head of Investor Relations from August 2002 to July 2008. Bell holds an M.B.A. from Durham University, England and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA).
About Valo HealthValo Health, Inc is a technology company focused on utilizing large scale data and AI-driven computation to discover and develop therapeutics. Valo aims to fully integrate human-centric data across the entire drug development life cycle into a single unified architecture, thereby accelerating the discovery and development of life-changing drugs while simultaneously reducing costs, time, and failure rates. The company’s Opal Computational Platform™ is an end-to-end drug discovery and development platform with a unified architecture designed to transform data into valuable insights that may accelerate discoveries and enable Valo to advance a robust pipeline of programs, initially focused on cardiovascular metabolic renal, oncology, and neurodegenerative disease. Founded by Flagship Pioneering and headquartered in Boston, MA, Valo also has offices in Lexington, MA, and New York, NY. To learn more, visit valohealth.com.
ContactsInvestors: Graeme Bell, [email protected]
Media: Kate Clayton, [email protected]
SOURCE Valo Health, Inc.
