Leadership
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CorInnova's dedicated team of professionals shares a passion and commitment to advance innovation within the field of Heart Failure treatment. Each member of our management team brings extensive experience within the medical device and healthcare services field and a track record of success.
William Altman
CEO
William Altman, CEO, provides executive management oversight drawing on 30 years' of experience building healthcare companies. Mr. Altman is a former McKinsey & Co. consultant, and co-founded two firms that grew to over $50M revenues, including one healthcare services company that grew to 500 employees. He has served on the boards of five growth companies, including a 7,000 employee NASDAQ listed company which increased its market capitalization from $0.5 billion to $1.5 billion during his tenure, when it was successfully sold for cash. A native of New Ulm, Texas (pop. 500), Mr. Altman earned a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University, an M.A. in Politics and Economics from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Vice President, Product Development
Boris Leschinsky, Vice President of Product Development, manages the development program on a day-to-day basis. Mr. Leschinsky has a track record of successful cardiac assist device product management from Datascope ($400 M revenues; 19 years’ experience) where as Vice President of Technology he managed $30 M of R&D activity. He was named as inventor on 40% of all Datascope patents encompassing cardiovascular assist, patient monitoring, vascular grafts and sealing devices during his career, and was the principal inventor and project team leader of the Percutaneous Heart Pump (PHP) left ventricular assist device (LVAD), which Datascope sold to Thoratec for $8.5 M in cash, and which has received the CE Mark. At the time of St. Jude’s acquisition of Thoratec in 2015, the PHP product was estimated to be valued at $300 to $500 million by two separate investment banking analysts.
John Criscione, MD, PhD
Co-Founder, Chief Technology Officer
John Criscione, MD, PhD, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, works as a consultant and is the Director of the Cardiac Mechanics Lab and Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University (TAMU). Dr. Criscione provides general consulting to the company, assisting in prototyping and pre-clinical animal studies as needed, and continues to make significant contributions to new inventions and key new patents relating to the core technology. Dr. Criscione earned his MD and PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.
Jonathan Williams
Consultant
Jonathan Williams, Consultant, is highly experienced in the design and development of complex FDA Class III medical devices and Class II patient monitoring instrumentation with more than 25 years’ experience in medical devices, including 15 years in electronic instrumentation. He is former Vice President of Cardiac R&D for Datascope Corporation where he managed an R&D staff of 42 engineers and technicians and supervised the design of modern drivers for intra-aortic balloon pump (IABP) catheters. These IABP drivers have substantially the same design objectives as the driver for the CorInnova device. Mr. Williams has 13 patents issued and 4 pending. He is overseeing the pneumatic driver design for CorInnova under the direction of Mr. Leschinsky.
Keith Svagerko
Vice President, Administration & Business Development
Keith Svagerko, Vice President, has business development and administration responsibilities at CorInnova. Mr. Svagerko has broad experience in business development and sales at start-up, early stage and large publicly held companies including Texas Oncology, US Oncology, and Unified Women's Healthcare. He is a Schedler Honors College graduate from the University of Central Arkansas, with a B.S. degree in Science. Mr. Svagerko earned a Masters in Health Administration from Indiana University, and an M.B.A. from the University of Texas at Arlington.
Sonia Deggs, CPA
Controller
Sonia Deggs, CPA, is CorInnova’s Controller and provides CorInnova’s financial accounting and reporting. Ms. Deggs brings 25+ years’ experience in private and public company accounting. Ms. Deggs has experience with multiple early stage and start-up companies.
Christina Bolch, PhD
Principal Engineer
Christina Bolch PhD, has 15 years' of experience in cardiovascular device research and development and manages three biomedical engineers. Christina joined the CorInnova team in 2007 as an R&D Engineering Intern, and continued to work with the company while working on her Bachelor of Science, Master of Engineering, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University. Prior to joining the team full time in 2012, Dr. Bolch collaborated with the Cardiac Rhythm Management division of Medtronic to model effects of pacemaker lead placement on contraction strain patterns from 2008-2010.
Senior Biomedical Engineer
Dr. Erica Perez is an engineer with over 10 years of experience in cardiovascular device research and development. Erica joined the CorInnova team in 2015 as an R&D Engineer while working on her Doctor of Philosophy degree in Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University. Before moving to Texas, Erica worked as a Research Assistant in the FDA Center for Devices and Radiological Health Cardiac Device Flow Laboratory in 2011, and completed her Bachelor of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Miami in 2012.
Senior Biomedical Engineer
Michael joined the CorInnova team in 2015 as an R&D Engineering intern while working on his Bachelor of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University. After graduating in 2016, Michael joined the team full-time as a Biomedical Engineer. He completed his Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin in 2021.
Graham Weeks
Senior Biomedical Engineer
Graham’s background is in mechanical and biomedical engineering with experience in R&D and medical device development. In 2017, he received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines. He then received his Master of Engineering in Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University in 2018. Graham joined the Corinnova Team in 2023 as a senior biomedical engineer.
Megan Haynes
Biomedical Engineer II
As a Biomedical Engineer for CorInnova, Megan works primarily on building device prototypes, benchtop testing, and assisting in preparation and conduction of animal studies. In 2019, she received her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Texas A&M University. While finishing her bachelor’s degree, Megan worked part-time with the company developing skills in prototype development and assisting in preclinical studies. After graduating, Megan joined the team full-time.