Valo Health Announces Changes to its Board of Directors and Leadership Team

BOSTON, Jan­u­ary 16, 2024 /​PRNewswire/​– Valo Health, Inc (“Valo”), a tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny focused on uti­liz­ing large scale data and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (“AI”) dri­ven com­pu­ta­tion to dis­cov­er and devel­op ther­a­peu­tics, today announced the appoint­ment of Chris­t­ian Schade as the new­ly-cre­at­ed role of Exec­u­tive Chair­man of the Board of Directors­ and Graeme Bell as inter­im CEO, effec­tive immediately.

Schade has served as a Board Direc­tor for Valo Health since Sep­tem­ber 2023, a role he took on after join­ing Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing as Growth Part­ner in Jan­u­ary 2023. Bell has served as Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent and Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer for Valo since 2020, and has assumed numer­ous oper­a­tional respon­si­bil­i­ties dur­ing his time with the com­pa­ny, includ­ing as Chief Peo­ple Offi­cer. Bell suc­ceeds David Berry, M.D., Ph.D., who has served as CEO of Valo Health since its launch by Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing in 2019 and whose last day of employ­ment is Feb­ru­ary 2. 

“Chris and Graeme have made tremen­dous con­tri­bu­tions to Valo dur­ing their tenure, and the Board of Direc­tors is con­fi­dent they are the right lead­ers for Valo’s future,” said Paul Bion­di, Chair­man of the Board of Direc­tors, Valo Health, and Exec­u­tive Part­ner, Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing. ​“I look for­ward to work­ing with Chris, Graeme and the entire lead­er­ship team to con­tin­ue Valo’s mis­sion to use large scale human-cen­tric data to devel­op bet­ter ther­a­peu­tics faster.”

“In addi­tion to his tenure as CFO, Graeme has become inte­gral to the oper­a­tions of Valo, mak­ing him the ide­al per­son to lead the com­pa­ny as CEO,” added Schade. ​“I look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to part­ner with Graeme, the Board of Direc­tors, and Valo’s team to progress our vision of trans­form­ing the drug dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment process using pro­pri­etary and dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed human-cen­tric data and AI-dri­ven com­pu­ta­tion for the ulti­mate ben­e­fit of patients.” 

“The tremen­dous­ly tal­ent­ed team at Valo and the organization’s deep com­mit­ment to our mis­sion have inspired me since join­ing the com­pa­ny,” added Bell. ​“I look for­ward to tak­ing the com­pa­ny for­ward, real­iz­ing the poten­tial of Opal, our com­pu­ta­tion­al plat­form, to speed up drug dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment both with­in Valo and with our partners.” 

About Chris­t­ian S. Schade
Chris­t­ian S. Schade has more than 30 years of pri­vate and pub­lic phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and biotech­nol­o­gy indus­try expe­ri­ence, as well as broad cor­po­rate finance exper­tise from his tenure in invest­ment bank­ing. Pri­or to Flag­ship, he served as the Chair­man and CEO of Aprea Ther­a­peu­tics Inc., a clin­i­cal-stage bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny. Pri­or to Aprea, Schade’s pre­vi­ous roles include CEO of Novi­ra (acquired by John­son & John­son), Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent (EVP) and Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer (CFO) of Omthera Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, Inc. (acquired by AstraZeneca Plc), EVP and CFO at NRG Ener­gy Inc., and Senior Vice Pres­i­dent of Admin­is­tra­tion and CFO at Medarex, Inc. (acquired by Bris­tol Myers Squibb). Before Medarex, Schade served as Man­ag­ing Direc­tor at Mer­rill Lynch in Lon­don and held var­i­ous cor­po­rate finance and cap­i­tal mar­kets posi­tions in New York and Lon­don for both Mer­rill Lynch and JP Mor­gan Chase & Co. Schade cur­rent­ly serves as Chair of the Board of Direc­tors of Omega Ther­a­peu­tics, Inc., All­tr­na Ther­a­peu­tics and serves on the Boards of Ring Ther­a­peu­tics, and Inte­gra Life­Sciences Inc., where he chairs the Audit and Finance Committees. 

About Graeme Bell
Graeme Bell has served as Valo’s Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer since August 2020 and, since Octo­ber 2022, Valo’s Chief Peo­ple Offi­cer. He has a dis­tin­guished 30-year career as a finan­cial exec­u­tive in the bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sec­tor with a broad range of expe­ri­ence suc­cess­ful­ly dri­ving strate­gic finan­cial oper­a­tions. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Bell was Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer at Tmu­ni­ty Ther­a­peu­tics, Inc., a pri­vate clin­i­cal-stage bio­ther­a­peu­tics com­pa­ny in Philadel­phia, Penn­syl­va­nia from Sep­tem­ber 2018 to June 2020. Pri­or to Tmu­ni­ty, Bell served as Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer of Intel­lia Ther­a­peu­tics, Inc. from Decem­ber 2016 to August 2018. Bell was also Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer and Chief Peo­ple Offi­cer at Ana­cor Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, Inc. from June 2015 to Novem­ber 2016. From 1993 until May 2015, Bell served in a num­ber of posi­tions of increas­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty at Mer­ck & Co., Inc., includ­ing Coun­try Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer, U.S. Human Health from 2010 to May 2015, Glob­al Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Fran­chis­es Con­troller from Octo­ber 2009 to July 2010, Coun­try Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer, U.K. from 2008 to 2009, and Glob­al Head of Investor Rela­tions from August 2002 to July 2008. Bell holds an M.B.A. from Durham Uni­ver­si­ty, Eng­land and is a Fel­low of the Char­tered Insti­tute of Man­age­ment Accoun­tants (CIMA).

About Valo Health
Valo Health, Inc is a tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny focused on uti­liz­ing large scale data and AI-dri­ven com­pu­ta­tion to dis­cov­er and devel­op ther­a­peu­tics. Valo aims to ful­ly inte­grate human-cen­tric data across the entire drug devel­op­ment life cycle into a sin­gle uni­fied archi­tec­ture, there­by accel­er­at­ing the dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment of life-chang­ing drugs while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly reduc­ing costs, time, and fail­ure rates. The company’s Opal Com­pu­ta­tion­al Plat­form™ is an end-to-end drug dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment plat­form with a uni­fied archi­tec­ture designed to trans­form data into valu­able insights that may accel­er­ate dis­cov­er­ies and enable Valo to advance a robust pipeline of pro­grams, ini­tial­ly focused on car­dio­vas­cu­lar meta­bol­ic renal, oncol­o­gy, and neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­ease. Found­ed by Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing and head­quar­tered in Boston, MA, Valo also has offices in Lex­ing­ton, MA, and New York, NY. To learn more, vis­it val​o​health​.com.

Con­tacts
Investors: Graeme Bell, gbell@​valohealth.​com
Media: Kate Clay­ton, kclayton@​valohealth.​com