Our Team
Andrea Tom Yet Alms
Founder
and Partner
Charlottesville,
VA
Ms. Alms, M.S., M.B.A. is a
founder and Managing Partner of BrookDell Partners. She brings over
12 years of experience sourcing, closing, managing, and exiting
equity investments as well as building life science assets
and
companies. She is the former fund manager of the Jefferson
Corner Group, a member-managed life sciences fund. Previously, Ms.
Alms served as President of Spinner Technologies, Inc., an
investment holding and
business incubator company specialized in
life science companies and developed with the University of Virginia
Patent Foundation, a technology
transfer office. Also, Ms. Alms is a former Licensing Associate
at the U.Va. Patent Foundation and former Research Associate at
Harvard Medical School and Harvard University. Ms. Alms
holds B.A. in Economics from Wellesley College, M.S. in Pharmacology
from University of Virginia, and M.B.A. from Averett
University.
Mark A.
Cochran
Advisor
Charlottesville, VA
Dr. Cochran,
Ph.D., is
an advisor of BrookDell Partners. Dr. Cochran has over
20 years of life science equity investment experience. He has
an extensive background in life science that includes roles in basic
and applied research, drug development, business development and
venture capital. Dr. Cochran is the former Managing Director
of NeuroVentures Fund LP, a Charlottesville, Virginia-based
investment fund, and MDS Capital Corp., a Toronto based Healthcare
venture capital group. Dr. Cochran’s experience in the
pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry includes serving at Bayer
Healthcare Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (“Bayer”) most recently as
Vice-President of Business Development, Biotechnology, in Berkeley,
California. Before joining Bayer, Dr. Cochran co-founded
MicroGeneSys, Inc., a Connecticut-based vaccine company
(“MicroGeneSys”) where he was a co-inventor and co-developer of
candidate vaccines for HIV, HBV, malaria, influenza and
others. Dr. Cochran holds a Ph.D. in microbiology and
immunology from Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, and a
Master’s degree in microbiology from the University of Guelph.
He has also completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the National
Institutes of Health and is listed as the author on 22 scientific
papers, 70 abstracts and six patents.
Troy
Knauss
Advisor
Greensboro,
NC
Mr.
Knauss
is
an advisor at BrookDell. He has over 15 years of experience in
family and start-up businesses. Mr. Knauss is co-founder and
managing partner of Guardant, which has four funds under management
in North Carolina and Florida. He is a former fund executive
for PAN, a series of committed capital angel funds with over $10
million under management and located in Greensboro, North
Carolina. PAN focuses on private “angel” investments in
high-growth, high-technology seed and early-stage firms with deal
sizes between $500,000 and $2.5 million. In his current position as a member of PAN, he
is assisting PAN in its exit strategies, and, in addition to the
fund activities , Mr. Knauss is an exited entrepreneur and an
active angel investor in emerging technologies. In 2007 and
2008, Mr. Knauss was named one of the Triad’s Impact Entrepreneurs
by Business Leader magazine. He speaks internationally on
private investing, is a faculty member for the North Carolina Small
Business and Technology Development Center’s Investor-Ready
Entrepreneur seminar series, and an adjunct professor at Wake Forest
University. Mr. Knauss holds a B.A. from Susquehanna
University and his M.B.A. degree from Wake Forest
University
.
John
Aldridge
Chief Financial Officer
Charlottesville,
VA
Mr.
Aldridge is a
Certified Public Accountant (licensed in California and Virginia)
and Business Advisor with over 35 years of professional experience.
Mr. Aldridge formerly was a partner with Deloitte, Haskins &
Sells (now Deloitte & Touche) and was partner in charge of the
firm's tax practice in Sacramento from 1982 through 1984.
Prior to
Deloitte, he worked for 12 years in the San Francisco offices of
Price Waterhouse and Deloitte Haskins & Sells. Since 1985,
Mr. Aldridge has managed his own CPA and Business Advisory firm in
Sacramento, California and Charlottesville, Virginia, emphasizing
tax planning, accounting and business planning for emerging business
and their owners. Mr. Aldridge moved to Charlottesville in
October 2004 where he currently resides. In addition to his
CPA experience, Mr. Aldridge has significant business management
experience. From 1994 through 1995, Mr. Aldridge served as the
President and COO of SampleTrak, a start-up software development
company. In October 1999, he was named the Acting CFO of
Versata, Inc., and guided them through a successful IPO in March
2000. Mr. Aldridge was then appointed CFO of RelayHealth
Corporation; a venture backed health services organization, and
assisted the CRO in completely reorganizing the Corporation
following a $19 million infusion of venture capital .
Mr.
Aldridge received a B.A. from Wheaton College, an M.B.A. from the
University of California at Berkeley Haas School of Business and an
M.S. in Taxation from Golden Gate University.
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