Board of Directors

Buzz Benson
Matt Burns
Jay Graf
Mike McCormick
Doug Roeder
John Sherman, MD
Dale Spencer
Dave Stassen
Gary Stevenson

Buzz Benson
Board Member

Buzz is a founding member of SightLine Partners. He focuses on emerging companies across the medical technology industry. Prior to SightLine, Buzz founded Piper Jaffray's Dedicated Venture activities in 1992. Prior to 1992, he co-headed Piper Jaffray's Investment Banking activities focused on the healthcare industry for six years. In addition to his over 16 years of venture capital experience, Buzz has been actively involved in a broad range of transactions for healthcare companies including mergers and acquisitions, corporate partner agreements, public offerings and private placements of equity and debt. Prior to joining Piper Jaffray in 1986, Buzz was a partner at Stonebridge Capital, a partnership investing in emerging publicly traded companies. Previously, he was an investment officer with Cherry Tree Ventures, and a manager in the public accounting firm of Arthur Andersen & Co. He is a graduate of St. John's University and a Certified Public Accountant.

Jay Graf
Board Member

Jay joined NEA in October 2005 as a Venture Partner focusing primarily on medical device investments. Jay comes to NEA after nearly 30 years experience in the healthcare industry. He currently serves on the boards of American Medical Systems, Anulex Technologies, CVRx, NorthStar Neuroscience and VytronUS. Most recently, Jay was Group Chairman of Guidant where he directed Guidant’s four operating groups before retiring in 2004. Prior to that, Jay was President of CPI, which is now part of Guidant’s Cardiac Rhythm Management Group, from 1992 to 2000 and was Executive Vice President and COO of CPI from 1990 to 1992. Jay held a variety of management positions with Eli Lilly’s Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Division between 1976 and 1990. He is a graduate of Boston University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business and Economics, and earned a Masters in Business Administration degree in finance from Indiana University. Jay served in the United States Air Force where he achieved the rank of Captain.

Douglas A. Roeder
Board Member

Doug joined Delphi Ventures as an Associate in 1998 and became a Partner in 2000. He focuses on medical devices, diagnostics and biotechnology.

Before joining Delphi, Doug was an Associate with Alex. Brown's Healthcare Investment Banking Group in San Francisco, where he focused on the medical device, life sciences, and healthcare services industries. Previously, Doug worked with Putnam Associates, a strategy consulting firm focused on the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.

Doug earned his A.B. in biochemistry from Dartmouth College in 1993. After earning his undergraduate degree, he spent a year conducting leukemia research at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.

John Sherman, MD
Board Member

John is a practicing Orthopedic Spine Surgeon in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He completed medical school at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. He completed a Residency in both Orthopedic Surgery and General Surgery at the University of Minnesota. John completed a Fellowship as an Assistant Professor of Spine Surgery at the UCLA Department of Orthopedics. His Academic appointments include Associate Professor at UCLA, Department of Orthopedics, and Assistant Clinical Instructor at the University of Minnesota, Department of Orthopedics. John has published many articles on spine surgery and lectures internationally on topics concerning the spine

Dale Spencer
Board Member

Dale has been a Board Director of Anulex since it was founded in 2001. Dale co-founded ev3 and Velocimed, which has now been acquired by St. Jude. He has also worked with several other start-up and early stage medical device companies and has been involved in raising in excess of $800 million from venture capital and institutional firms and individual investors.

Dale was President and CEO of SciMed Life Systems from 1982 to 1993 and became Chairman and CEO in 1994. During his time at SciMed, Dale developed and executed SciMed's interventional cardiology strategy and increased sales from less than $1 million to over $400 million. In 1995, he led the merger of SciMed with Boston Scientific Corporation and then served as Executive Vice President at Boston Scientific Corporation from 1995 to 1997 and remained on the Board of Director’s until 1999.

In addition to Anulex, Dale currently serves on the Board of Directors of CVRx® and ev3, MicroTherapeutics and Northstar Neuroscience.

Dale received a B.S. from the University of Maine and an M.B.A. in Finance and Marketing from the University of Illinois.

Dave Stassen
Board Member

Dave is a founding Managing Director of Split Rock Partners and a member of the firm’s healthcare investment team. While his investing purview spans the country, Dave focuses particularly on the strong medical technology industry in Minnesota.

Prior to founding Split Rock Partners, Dave was a General Partner with St. Paul Venture Capital’s healthcare team. He rejoined St. Paul Venture Capital in 2000, nine years after he left the firm to lead Spine-Tech, an emerging growth company specializing in the development and marketing of revolutionary spinal implant products. Dave led Spine-Tech from its formation in 1991 through product development, clinical trials, FDA approval, market launch and growth in revenue to over $100 million. The company was acquired in January 1998 for over $600 million. In acknowledgement of this success, Dave was named the 1998 Ernst & Young National Entrepreneur of the Year.

From 1980 to 1990, Dave was a venture capitalist with North Star Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Minneapolis. Dave began his business career with IBM Corporation, after graduating from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Gary Stevenson
Board Member

Gary Stevenson is Managing Partner of MB Venture Partners, LLC. He co-founded the Firm after six years in health care investment banking and equity research. He also spent seven years in a variety of general management roles with Abbott Laboratories, one of the largest and most diversified health care companies in the world. Gary holds an undergraduate degree in accounting from the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. He also received an M.B.A. from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Business at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Gary also serves on the Board of Directors for BioSET, and Protein Discovery and is a Board Observer for AxioMed Spine Corporation. He served on the Board of Directors for BioMimetic Therapeutics (NASDAQ: BMTI) from May 2003 to August 2005.