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Women@SLS Advisory Board

Women@SLS is a group dedicated to enhancing opportunities for women in the life scienceindustry. The Advisory Board represents an impressive group of women from industry, medicine, and academia that are passionate about supporting women at all levels in their careers.  

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Marketing Director,Strategic Accounts – Molnlycke Healthcare

Allyson Bower-Willner

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Managing Director – Health Research Partnerships at Georgia Tech

Sherry Farrugia

Chief Innovation Officer, Medical University of South Carolina

Dr. Jesse Goodwin

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Vice President of Regulatory Affairs – Brookhaven Medical

Grace Powers

Dr. Lauren Rashford

Dr. Esra Roan

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Principal – Meunier Carlin & Curfman

Meredith Struby

Director of Cardiovascular Research – Piedmont Heart Institute

Jayne Morgan

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Marketing Director,Strategic Accounts – Molnlycke Healthcare

Allyson Bower-Willner

Ms. Bower-Willner has over 20 years of diverse medical device, NGS (Next Generation Sequencing), biologics and pharmaceutical experience. Her experience ranges from pre-revenue start-ups to multinational Fortune 100 companies, with many in between. Allyson currently serves as the Marketing Director, Strategic Accounts, for Molnlycke Healthcare.

In addition to her work at small medical device companies in the Atlanta area, she previously held roles at Halyard Health, CardioMEMS (now St. Jude Medical), CR Bard and at PRTM (Pittiglio, Rabin, Todd and McGrath, now Price Waterhouse Cooper). Her experience encompasses upstream and downstream marketing, strategy, product development, manufacturing, and quality assurance. Her passion is bringing new and innovative technologies to market. Allyson is a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Rutgers Graduate School of Management.

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Managing Director – Health Research Partnerships at Georgia Tech

Sherry Farrugia

Sherry Farrugia is the Managing Director for Health Research Partnerships at Georgia Tech and Director of the Pediatric Technology Center, a research collaboration between Georgia Tech and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. In this dual role she works to build and sustain public-private partnerships, and spends half her time at Georgia Tech and the other half at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta where she manages the multi- million research portfolio. Farrugia has nearly 25 years experience in the Health IT field, working in data analytics, data visualization, and clinical and financial outcomes. She owned a health IT company that she sold to McKesson HBOC, and was involved in several other successful start up companies.

Before coming to Georgia Tech she owned a healthcare consulting company focusing on predictive health and risk mitigation in the area of chronic disease prediction, prevention, and management.

Farrugia is a member of: TAG Health Board, Gwinnett Tech HIT Advisory Board, an active member of the Bioscience HIT council at the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, Health Connect South Advisory Board, HIT Leadership Summit Innovation Committee, HIMSS, Atlanta Ronald McDonald House Charities Advisory Council, and Emory Board of Visitors. Ms. Farrugia received her B.S. in Chemistry with a minor in Physics from Auburn University.

Chief Innovation Officer, Medical University of South Carolina

Dr. Jesse Goodwin

Dr. Goodwin is the Chief Innovation Officer for the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). Dr. Goodwin is charged with serving as a catalyst for programs and initiatives that incentive a culture of innovation. She also provides oversight and coordination amongst MUSC’s innovation ecosystem, developing intrapreneurial and entrepreneurial strategies to support a diverse innovation portfolio spanning all domains of the tripartite mission. Prior to this role, Dr. Goodwin was the Vice President of Development for the Zucker Institute for Applied Neurosciences, a technology accelerator at MUSC, and had also served as the Deputy Director of the MUSC Foundation for Research Development, the organization’s technology transfer office.

Dr. Goodwin came to MUSC from a Boston-based intellectual property (IP) consulting firm where she was Director of the Medical Device division, providing insight to client companies on IP matters pertaining to a vast array of medical technologies. Dr. Goodwin completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program. She holds a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Stony Brook University.

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Vice President of Regulatory Affairs – Brookhaven Medical

Grace Powers

Grace Powers is the Vice President of Regulatory Affairs for Brookhaven Medical. She has fifteen years experience in cardiology and urology medical devices including R&D. She has management experience including RA responsibilities related to submissions and compliance. Her RA submission experience includes 510(k), IDE, PMA, HUD, EU Technical Files and Design Dossiers.

Grace previously has managed an International RA team which including Canadian licensing, Australia, Japan, China, Russia, Latin America and other country submissions. She has worked for C.R. Bard, CardioMEMS and Novoste. She also does regulatory consulting for universities, inventors and start-ups. Grace holds a BE in Biomedical Engineering from Vanderbilt University, a MS in Biomedical Engineering from UCLA and an MBA from Georgia Tech. She is RAC US, RAC Europe, and RAC Global certified.

Dr. Lauren Rashford

Lauren is currently serving as the Senior Director of Clinical Operations at Moterum Technologies. She holds a doctorate in physical therapy and brings substantial experience in the neuro-rehabilitation world, including clinical management and business development roles. With her strong background in both clinical and commercial rehabilitation she offers expertise in clinical strategy and integration. She has played a direct role in launch strategy, data integration, and research development. Lauren has been responsible for clinical operations, building and leveraging partnerships, and delivering current protocols/education. Additionally, Lauren will continue to cultivate, build and maintain relationships that help foster the clinical integration process.

Prior to her time at Moterum, Lauren specialized working with the neurologic population, specifically amputees and spinal cord injury. She also holds a BA in Education from Brandeis University, where she played college basketball.

Dr. Esra Roan

Dr. Esra Roan is the CEO and co-founder of SOMAVAC® Medical Solutions, Inc. Previously, she served as an Associate Professor in the Biomedical Engineering Department at the University of Memphis.  She had the opportunity to utilize her technical skills in diverse environments from industry and academia to small business. She began her career as a development engineer at 3M Precision Optics (Cincinnati, OH). In her academic role, Dr. Roan built a soft tissue and cell mechanics lab at the U of Memphis where she was recognized for her research with an Outstanding Early Career Investigator Award from the American Thoracic Society. She co-founded SOMAVAC Medical Solutions to design and commercialize medical technologies focusing on post-surgical recovery at home.

Dr. Roan has BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Tennessee Technological University (TTU) and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Roan’s path to the US was through a tennis scholarship at TTU, where she was recognized for her achievements with an introduction into the TTU Athletic Hall of Fame in 2011. She now lives in Memphis, TN with her husband Steve and two children (Ben and Emre).

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Principal – Meunier Carlin & Curfman

Meredith Struby

Meredith has been a practicing patent attorney since 2003, focusing on mechanical, medical devices, and electro-mechanical systems. She advises large and small clients about protecting their innovations and other intellectual property and avoiding the intellectual property of others.

She has extensive experience preparing and prosecuting utility and design patent applications before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office related to a variety of technology areas, including automotive, building materials, fasteners, children’s toys, medical devices, and textiles. She also works with universities on mechanical related inventions.

Director of Cardiovascular Research – Piedmont Heart Institute

Jayne Morgan

Jayne Morgan, M.D. is a Cardiologist and the Executive Director of the Covid Task Force at the Piedmont Healthcare Corporation in Atlanta, GA, the largest healthcare system in Georgia.  Within this role she serves as the system Covid vaccine expert, analyzing the science and data from Piedmont and nationally, drives efforts at addressing vaccine hesitancy via education to internal staff, external stakeholders, media, and the greater external community. Dr. Morgan has been named to the Health Equity and Covid Task Force for the Governor of the state of Georgia and selected to support the Department of Health in its series of “Ask The Experts”.  Additionally she serves as a CNN medical expert contributor and is the owner and creator of The Stairwell Chronicles – a social media series directed towards addressing questions surrounding Covid vaccines in a conversational format.

Previously, Dr. Morgan was the System Director of Innovation at Piedmont Healthcare, Inc. where she created the Piedmont Accelerator and secured the first ever licensing of a medical device developed entirely internally. This has allowed Piedmont to receive its first ever royalties. Further, she provided support to a second medical and biotech invention receiving a $23,000,000 outside investment.

Prior to this role, Dr. Morgan served as the System Director of Research and Innovation, also at Piedmont Healthcare, Inc. where she set the strategic growth of the Piedmont Research Institute and introduced the importance of increasing enrollment of minorities into clinical trials as a strategic initiative for the system.

Initially, Dr. Morgan came to Piedmont as the Director of Cardiovascular Research where she expanded research to other satellite hospital facilities and created the Feasibility Program. Both have been huge successes and have propelled Piedmont Healthcare, Inc. to #1 status worldwide in the tricuspid space and #1 nationally within the mitral space of transcatheter valve technologies. Further these efforts, as well as the focus on other strategic growth initiatives, realized steadily increasing revenue earnings that converted the Cardiovascular Research department from a cost center to a profit center.

Dr. Morgan is published in the areas of Congenital Heart Disease, Interventional Cardiology, and Covid19. Moreover, Dr. Morgan has served as the Chief Medical Officer of the American Chemistry Council (where she developed a new translational research program), CEO of Forty Million Beats, LLC – with clients such as Novartis, Abbott, and Moderna – the Cardiology advisor to the MitraClip Team at Abbott Labs, the World Wide Director of the Cardiorenal Drug Development program at Solvay Pharmaceuticals, and the Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic.

Dr. Morgan currently serves as the immediate past President of the Southeast Life Sciences Association (single largest biotech & medtech association in the Southeast), an adjunct Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at The Morehouse School of Medicine, Co-Chair of the Health and Human Services Conference 2022, Board Member of the National Diversity and Inclusion team at the American Heart Association.