QuantumLeap Healthcare’s Board of Directors is composed of seasoned high-tech executives and leading researchers from their respective fields.

Alan Hu :: Co-Founder

Alan Hu is a high-tech executive with almost 30 years of experience at several technology companies. As part of his 15 years at IBM, he was on the team that crafted the IBM Global Services strategy and took it to market in 1987. In 1985, Alan was sponsored by IBM as a Sloan Fellow at the Stanford Business School, earning a Master’s degree in business.

Alan joined Sun Microsystems in 1992 and started up the company’s service business in more than 200 countries worldwide. In 1994, Alan was recruited to be VP of Information Systems at HealthCare Delivery Systems, a new subsidiary of McKesson Corp focused on the then new world of bio-tech pharmaceutical distribution. In 1996, Alan became an angel investor and Vice President at WebLogic, a Java software startup, subsequently acquired by BEA Systems (BEAS). After the sale of the company, Alan co-founded Collabria and served as the company’s Chief Executive Officer. Collabria offered Internet-based collaboration solutions in the print and graphic arts supply chain. This software was subsequently acquired by Hewlett Packard in 2001 and incorporated into its high-end printing systems.

Currently, Alan is President of QuantumLeap Healthcare, a non-profit foundation established to manage Technology Transfer from research into the marketplace. QLHCC is currently deploying a national clinical trials matching portal to assist women with breast cancer in finding and enrolling in advanced pharmaceutical research programs.

Laura Esserman, MD, MBA :: Co-Founder

Dr. Esserman is a surgeon and breast cancer oncology specialist practicing at the UCSF Breast Care Center where she is also Director. She has led many cross-disciplinary projects and trials. As the PI of a Department of Defense-funded Center of Excellence (COE) grant, she has brought together health care and industry partners to resolve the challenges of improving quality patient care.

Dr. Esserman has led many multidisciplinary projects. For her leadership of the I SPY TRIAL, a collaboration among three cooperative groups, NCI Center for Bioinformatics and SPORE program, she received the 2005 SPORE Investigator of the Year Award. As PI of a Department of Defense-funded Center of Excellence grant, she has brought together an extraordinary multidisciplinary group of investigators and health care and industry partners to work on important problems of improving the quality of care delivered to women with breast cancer. The breadth of collaborators in this proposal demonstrates her ability to galvanize people to come together to create solutions that serve as models for improved health care delivery in the U.S. Esserman is a surgeon and breast cancer oncology specialist practicing at BCC where she is also Director.

Robert Patterson, Esq. :: Co-Founder

Robert Patterson is an attorney at Squire, Sanders & Dempsey and has 31 years of experience providing legal counsel to high tech business clients. He advises clients on a variety of matters including startup issues and the formation of new businesses predicated on technology. He was named as one of Silicon Valley’s top corporate lawyers in May 2003 by San Jose Magazine.

Mr. Patterson works closely with venture capital investors in investment and operation activities. He has assisted non-US corporations in their formation, acquisition and operation of US companies. He serves as a director of several biotechnology-based corporations, among others. He has been a director and member of the investment committee of an international venture capital fund since 1983 and, in that regard, has negotiated numerous venture capital investments both as a lawyer and, on occasion, an investor. He is a founding partner of a technology-focused SBIC venture fund. His practice over the years has included representation of non-US corporations doing business in Silicon Valley. Mr. Patterson was a visiting scholar at the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth College where he was the inaugural fellow of the Tuck Center for Private Equity.

Jeff Pfeffer, PhD. :: Co-Founder

Jeffrey Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, where he has taught since 1979. He is the author or co-author of eleven books and has also published more than 110 articles and book chapters. Dr. Pfeffer has served on the faculties of the business schools at the University of Illinois and the University of California at Berkeley. During the 1981-1982 academic year he was the Thomas Henry Carroll-Ford Foundation Visiting Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and during 2006 he was a visiting Professor at the London Business School, Singapore Management University, and IESE.

He currently serves on the board of directors of SonoSite, a publicly traded company that develops hand-carried ultrasound equipment, and Audible Magic, a start-up developing music and advertising recognition technology and copyright protection products.

Dr. Pfeffer received his B.S. in Administration and Management Science and his M.S. in Industrial Administration from Carnegie-Mellon University. He obtained his Ph.D. in Business Administration from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Dr. Pfeffer is a member and Fellow of the Academy of Management and a member of the Industrial Relations Research Association. He has won the Richard D. Irwin award for Scholarly Contributions to Management as well as several awards for books and articles.

Sue Dubman

Currently Vice President, Information Technology (IT) and Informatics at Theravance, Inc., Sue Dubman has over 15 years experience in life sciences and health care. Prior to Theravance, Sue was Director of Biomedical Informatics Applications at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). In that role she helped architect and lead several key informatics programs that are widely recognized for their potential to change the way research is done, drugs are developed and how patients and providers interact with the health care enterprise. These include CRIX, caBIGTM, BRIDG, the National Cancer Imaging Archive, caIntegrator and the I-SPY and REMBRANDT translational research applications, caAdapter and caMATCH, among others. Sue has also served as a Chief Information Officer (CIO) at 3 other companies including a $2 Billion wholly owned subsidiary of Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), an information services company owned by Cardinal Health, and an e-commerce startup providing Internet-based health care products and services in partnership with the United Nations and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Well known in the IT and Informatics fields, Ms. Dubman and her teams have been the recipient of many awards and honors including Computerworld Honors in the Science Category, the CIO-100 Award for innovation, the Infoworld 100 Award, Aberdeen Group’s Top 10 CRM Systems Award, Networld/Interop’s Best New Product Award, Network World’s User Excellence Award, NCI’s Scientific Achievement Merit Award, and the Service to America Award in the Science category.

Ms. Dubman sits on several boards including CRIX International, QuantumLeap Healthcare, a non-profit foundation set up to support the development and implementation of innovative ways to deliver health care and the Industry Advisory Board of CDISC. Sue completed work towards her Ph.D. at Brown University in population sciences and received her M.A. and B.A from the University of Missouri, where she also taught statistics and computer science courses.

Sue Foley, CFA

Susan is an investment professional with over 24 years experience in the institutional investment management business. Previously a partner of the investment firm, Harris Bretall Sullivan and Smith, LLC (1989-2006) Harris Bretall was recently purchased by Federated Investors of Pennsylvania. Harris Bretall was a large capitalization growth stock manager with over $7 billion dollars in assets under management of public and private institutions: corporations, endowments and foundations and individual investors. Susan led the portfolio management group, sat on the investment policy committee and was the lead portfolio manager on the Technology Communications & Entertainment Portfolio.

Susan is a Chartered Financial Analyst, Chartered Investment Counselor and member of both the Security Analyst’s of San Francisco and of AIMR. In the past she has been associated with the National Association of Business Economists. She has served on both private corporate boards and charitable organizations including: National Charity League, Menlo School and the Breast Cancer Center for UCSF.

Dixie Horning

Dixie Horning is Executive Director of the UCSF National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health and Administrative Director, Living in a Nonviolent Community. Dixie is a results-driven leader with extensive experience organizing communities, designing public policy, managing organizations and motivating staff and administering complex programs. Through work in various organizations, such as the Gray Panthers, UCSF, and the Southern Mutual Help Center, Dixie has been recognized for key accomplishments at the local, state national and international levels. She is a National and State Leader in the field of Wellness, Health and Leisure Services. Among her numerous accolades, she was selected as one of the “Leaders of the New Century” by National Public Business Information™ in 2001.

Dixie’s track record of professional and personal achievements includes building diverse coalitions, funding, directing and planning complex programs. In her work at the University of California, San Francisco Institute on Aging and the Center of Excellence, Dixie has been awarded for Outstanding Staff Performance three times in as many years. Dixie is proud to lend her expertise to continue making meaningful contributions to communities, institutions and individuals.

During her storied career, Dixie has managed to save some of her energy to compete as an internationally-ranked Triathlete in the Ironman World Championship Triathlon in Hawaii in 1990 and 1992. She has completed ten marathons as well as the 1997 Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon. She is an avid supporter of sport and has officiated softball, volleyball, basketball, swimming meets and baseball at the recreational, high school, college and international level. She is the past chair of two national nonprofits, SeniorNet and the National Women’s History Project and currently co-chairs, Veriditas, an international non profit. In 2003, Texas A & M-Texarkana, named her the 2003 Distinguished Alumna.