About Us - Board of Directors
The Board of Directors is responsible for Glide Pharma's corporate governance and is ultimately accountable for our activities, strategy and financial performance.
Chairman: Mark Kirby BSc
From 1982, Mark took Profile Therapeutics/Medic-Aid Ltd via MBO, which he led, to a stock market flotation (raising £27.5m against a market cap of £81m) and subsequent trade sale in 2004. Profile Therapeutics was until July 2004 a publicly listed company involved in the development and commercialization of specialist inhaled pharmaceutical therapies and drug delivery systems to improve the treatment of respiratory patients. As well as chairing Glide Pharma, Mark is CEO of start-up Achyra Technologies Ltd, a company developing a highly differentiated and novel form of mass spectrometry with potential application to significant markets in homeland security, healthcare and industrial process control. Since joining Achyra, Mark has raised funding of ca £500K (November 2004) to allow achievement of its technical and market related milestones.
Chief Executive Officer: Dr Charles Potter MA PhD
Charles is the inventor of the Glide technology and founder of Glide Pharma. He holds an engineering degree and PhD from Cambridge University. Charles spent six years undertaking research within the Transplant Unit at Papworth Hospital, a specialist cardiothoracic centre, where he gained extensive medical experience. Charles has worked in four other successful start-up companies including nearly six years at PowderJect Pharmaceuticals where he saw the company grow from just five employees to over 1000. charles.potter@glidepharma.com
Chief Financial Officer: Simon Jones BSc ACA
Following a degree in physics, Simon joined Ernst and Young where he qualified as a Chartered Accountant. Simon held a number of senior posts with Unipart. He joined Oxonica in 2000 as CFO and was involved with several fundraising rounds and the commercial development of the company including negotiating IP in-licensing and out-licensing agreements and the first major sales contract for the lead product to market. Up until the time that he left last year, Simon saw the company grow from six to 30 employees. simon.jones@glidepharma.com
Non-Executive Director: Professor Russell Smith BSc MD PhD
Following 15 years spent with multi-national pharmaceutical companies, in 1998 Russell co-founded Avidex Ltd, a spin-out company from the University of Oxford, raising £1.7m of equity finance in its first year of operations. Russell left the company in December 2000, following the successful completion of a £10m finance round that valued the company at £25m, to become CEO of Prolysis Ltd, another University of Oxford spin-out company. He restructured Prolysis and raised over £5m prior to leaving in 2003 to focus on Business Boffins Ltd, a company dedicated to advising young enterprises. In 2004 he became Chairman of Surface Therapeutics Ltd and raised £1.5m of venture capital for the new company.
Non-Executive Director: Fraser Skirrow MA MBA
Fraser is CEO of MedInnovate Ltd, a UK based company that works with Medical, Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology companies helping them achieve major improvements in patient care whilst creating significant returns for founders, employees and investors. Previously, he spent 15 years working at Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting) including five years as a Partner. After a wide experience of consulting in the engineering and aerospace industries, and Government, he specialized in performance improvement in pharmaceutical R&D. He has managed post merger integration in large development organizations and created capabilities for biotech and small technology companies. He has consulted to, and invested in small medical and technology companies bringing innovative products to market.
