John D. Balian, MD is a physician-turned-executive who co-founded ClinChoice, one of the world's larger full-service contract research organizations, and serves as its CEO, International. He spent years inside the FDA, then ran drug safety and regulatory operations at Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson before building a global CRO spanning the US, Europe and Southeast Asia. He is also a published novelist whose debut, Gray Wolves and White Doves, draws on his Armenian heritage and the Armenian Genocide.
Souvik Paul is the CEO and Founder of Aurie, a medtech company that built the first FDA De Novo-cleared reusable intermittent catheter system. A Harvard-educated designer and former J&J strategist, Paul was driven to start Aurie after witnessing a family member's struggle with catheter-associated infections following a spinal cord injury. His Oakland-based startup has raised $14.24M and is pioneering a no-touch, automatically disinfecting catheter system designed to transform care for the 600,000 Americans who rely on intermittent catheters.