Management Team

Michael Nall
General Manager, US Sales & Marketing

 

Karen Gutekunst
Vice President, R&D

Karen joined Clarient in August 2011 after an 18 year career with Roche Molecular Systems. While at Roche Karen led various teams including Product Development, Project Management and Regulatory Affairs. Karen played key roles in the development of PCR-based tests for infectious diseases including hepatitis C and HIV. Karen was also a member of the team that successfully completed the ATHENA trial, a study that enrolled over 45,000 women screened for cervical cancer with conventional PAP testing compared to HPV DNA testing. This study was the basis for FDA approval of Roche’s HPV DNA test.
Karen has a broad background spanning product development through the regulatory process for in vitro diagnostic products. Karen holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Georgia and a Ph.D from Georgia Tech.

Karen is passionate about people and enjoys putting her scientific background to the development of clinically useful diagnostic products that impact patients’ lives.

Carrie Eglinton Manner
Chief Executive Officer

Carrie joined Clarient as Chief Executive Officer in February 2012 after 15 years with GE Healthcare. She is an experienced executive leader and has served in a number of roles across the disciplines of sales, marketing, services, quality, and acquisition integration.

Most recently Carrie was the General Manager of the Maternal Infant Care (MIC) division, formerly Ohmeda Medical, the global market leader providing solutions to support healthcare providers in caring for mothers and their babies during pregnancy, labor and delivery, and neonatal intensive care. With executive responsibility for MIC, Carrie and her team grew the Laurel, Maryland-based business by more than 35% over 2 years by significantly expanding its global reach through an increased technology innovation pipeline of Giraffe®, Panda®, Lullaby® and Corometrics® brand products. Her team was instrumental in advancing GE’s rural health strategy globally and developed partnerships with thought leaders and across sectors to address the need to improve mother and child health outcomes while decreasing neonatal and maternal mortality rates worldwide. Prior to joining MIC, she was Vice President of Surgery and General Manager of Services where she helped the Salt Lake City, Utah-based business drive growth and compliance, gaining market clearance under an FDA Consent Decree from 2007-2009. Before Surgery Services, she was the Director of GE Healthcare’s Global Marketing Operations helping launch the implementation of marketing strategy and rigor across the business from the global headquarters in Pollards Wood, United Kingdom from 2005-2007.

In other healthcare roles, Carrie led GE Healthcare’s acquisition integration of Amersham plc in 2004 for the Americas sales and marketing functions and was a global leader in pricing for the functional and molecular imaging business based in Waukesha, Wisconsin. She became a certified Six Sigma quality black belt improving commercial effectiveness following her success in sales of GE Healthcare’s diagnostic imaging solutions for radiology from 1996 to 2000 in Dallas, Texas and Southern Connecticut.

Carrie has a passion for delivering healthymagination™ value for customers and their patients, helping to increase access to higher quality healthcare at a more affordable cost. She is excited about the opportunities within Clarient to increase the clarity of cancer diagnostics.

Carrie is a native of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame. She is married to Derek, and they have two children.  

Michael W. Brown
Vice President, General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer & Privacy Officer

Michael W. Brown joined Clarient as Vice President, General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer and Privacy Officer in August of 2011.  Previously, Mr. Brown served as Global Compliance Counsel at Edwards Lifesciences where he implemented its global compliance program for healthcare and anti-corruption, directed its healthcare professional contracting program and oversaw its physician transparency reporting program.  Prior to joining Edwards in 2008, Mr. Brown served as Vice President, Assistant General Counsel, Compliance/Privacy for InSight Health Services Corp. where, from 1999 until 2008, he assisted InSight with going private, developed and implemented InSight’s Compliance/HIPAA program, and oversaw multiple acquisitions/integrations that doubled the size of the company.  From 1997 until 1999, Mr. Brown was Asociate Operations Counsel for Tenet HealthSystems and was responsible for performing the legal work for six acute care hospitals in California.  From 1990 to 1997, Mr. Brown served as Corporate Counsel and Compliance Officer for Apria Healthcare and its predecessor, Homedco.  While there, he assisted with the initial public offering, the merger creating Apria and other multi-million dollar acquisitions, created/oversaw Apria’s national contracting program, and was lead in-house counsel responsible for negotiating the settlement of the company’s qui tam action and oversaw the implementation of Apria’s corporate integrity agreement. 

Mr. Brown holds a J.D. from Pepperdine University, School of Law and graduated cum laude with a B.A. in Political Science from California State University at Fullerton.  He is admitted to practice law in California and is a frequent speaker on compliance, privacy, and other legal-healthcare related topics.
 

Melinda Griffith
Senior Vice President, Product Aquisition & Licensing
 

Melinda Griffith joined Clarient as SVP, Corporate and Legal Affairs, Chief Compliance Officer and Corporate Secretary in June 2010, and became head of Clarient’s Product Acquisition and Licensing efforts in February 2011.
From April, 2009 until June 2010, Ms. Griffith was a consultant to Clarient, providing assistance on a variety of transactions including the acquisition of Applied Genomics in December 2009.  Before joining Clarient, Ms. Griffith served as the Executive Vice President, Corporate Development and General Counsel of Tethys Biosciences. Ms. Griffith joined Tethys from Roche Molecular Diagnostics, where, as Senior Vice President of Licensing and Law, she led the global licensing and legal activities for the worldwide leader in molecular diagnostics.   A member of RMD's Executive Team, she directed the licensing programs of the PCR technologies and led successful initiatives to acquire rights to pioneer patent portfolios for HIV, Hepatitis C, Human Papilloma Virus, and micro-array technology. Before joining Roche, Ms. Griffith was head of legal and licensing affairs for Axys Pharmaceutical and Genelabs Technologies and began her biotechnology legal career at Cetus Corporation. She also was a corporate associate at the Bingham McCutchen law firm. Ms. Griffith received her B.S. in Business Administration from U.C. Berkeley and her J.D. from U.C. Hastings College of the Law. She is admitted to practice law in California and New York and is a frequent speaker on intellectual property licensing and litigation topics.
 

Kenneth J. Bloom, M.D., F.C.A.P.
Chief Medical Officer

 

Kenneth J. Bloom, MD has been Medical Director since August 2004 and Chief  Medical Officer since 2005. Dr. Bloom came to Clarient from Irvine, CA-based US Labs, where he served as Senior Medical Director since 2002. Prior to that, Dr. Bloom spent more than two decades serving in senior academic, consultative and clinical roles with leading hospitals and healthcare enterprises principally in the specialization of cancer care.
 

Dr. Bloom’s academic posts have included over 10 years as Associate Professor of Pathology at Chicago-based Rush Medical College, as well as one year as a visiting Professor in the Department of Computer Science at DePaul University. Over the past 15 years, Dr. Bloom has held more than 10 appointed positions at Chicago-based Rush Presbyterian - St. Luke’s Medical Center, one of the leading cancer research hospitals in the US. Those positions included Director of Laboratory Operations, Director of Immunohistochemistry, and Director of the Breast Service in the Department of Pathology, Consultant to the Rush Breast Cancer Center, and Director of Information Services for the Rush Cancer Institute.
 

Dr. Bloom has, for more than three decades, been a prolific researcher and lecturer in the fields of pathology and, specifically, cancer related topics. During his tenure at Rush, his published studies validating the benefits of ACIS® (Automated Cellular Imaging System) image analysis for HER2 evaluation were instrumental in gaining broad acceptance for the Clarient technology. He has been a member of the College of American Pathologists since 1987 and currently serves as a member of the Immunohistochemistry and Technology Assessment Committees for that organization.
 

In addition to US LABS and the other roles mentioned above, Dr. Bloom has served the industry off and on for the past 20 years in both advisory and operational roles. Those appointments include Board of Directors seats, consulting roles and executive posts including executive level positions at both diagnostics technology and information technology firms.
 

Michael R. Rodriguez
Chief Operating Officer