Chairperson, Venture Partner and Managing Director
Pharmaceutical Scieces
Clear Side Biomedical
Georgia
Dr. Shaffer has served as a director of our company and as the Chairman of our Board of Directors since January 2012. Since August 2015, Dr. Shaffer has served as a General Partner with Hatteras Venture Partners, an investment firm and from 2011 to August 2015 as a Venture Partner. Since 2011, Dr. Shaffer has also served as Managing Director of Hatteras Discovery, which invests in early-stage companies in the life sciences industry sector. From 1995 to March 2010, Dr. Shaffer served in increasing leadership positions at Inspire Pharmaceuticals, a publicly held biopharmaceutical company, beginning as the company’s first full-time employee and Director of Clinical Operations and eventually being appointed as Chief Executive Officer and a director of the company in 1999, as its President in 2005 and a member of its Development Committee in 2009. Prior to Inspire, she was a clinical research scientist, international project leader and Associate Director of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Burroughs Wellcome Co. Dr. Shaffer currently serves in leadership roles on several non-profit boards, including as chair of the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center’s advisory board, on the Board of Trustees for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and as chair of the board of CFF Therapeutic, Inc. Dr. Shaffer is a receptor pharmacologist by training, earning her Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Tennessee’s Health Science Center in Memphis, Tennessee. She completed post-doctoral training at The Chicago Medical School as well as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In September 2008, the Securities and Exchange Commission approved a non-monetary settlement of its investigation relating to Inspire Pharmaceuticals’ disclosures in its periodic reports relating to a clinical trial. The Commission also approved a settlement with Dr. Shaffer, as Inspire’s President and Chief Executive Officer and a member of its board of directors, under which she consented to a cease and desist order against future violations of Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act and Rules 12b-20 and 13a-13 thereunder. The cease and desist order followed a finding by the Commission that three Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q filed by Inspire included misleading disclosure about a clinical trial, specifically that the trial was described as “confirmatory” and “replicating” the efficacy found in an earlier trial. Dr. Shaffer did not admit or deny any findings in the order, and the order did not include any finding of any violation of any statute or regulation that involved any intentional wrong doing or fraud, any monetary payments or other sanctions or otherwise affect Dr. Shaffer’s future employment status, nor did it prohibit Dr. Shaffer from serving in any capacity on public company boards of directors. Our board of directors believes that Dr. Shaffer’s clinical background as a scientist and her leadership experience as chief executive of a public company in the biopharmaceutical industry provides her with the qualifications and skills to serve as a director of our company.
Pharmaceutical Scieces