Executive Leadership Council

Zhenya Lindgardt

President and CEO​

Zhenya Lindgardt is the President and CEO and a Board Director of Sera Prognostics, Inc., The Pregnancy Company® (NASDAQ: SERA), focused on improving maternal and neonatal health by providing innovative pregnancy biomarker information to doctors and patients.

Prior to joining Sera Prognostics first as a Board Director in 2021, Zhenya was a member of Executive Leadership team and a C-level executive at Uber Technologies, Inc. in charge of creating new long-term growth businesses on Uber platform, customer engagement & cross-sell across core businesses. In her role at Uber, Zhenya focused on incubating new and scaling current Uber’s two-sided marketplaces and services, driving experimentally proven incremental growth through customer retention and engagement (including cross sell, personalization, portfolio of loyalty programs, subscriptions) across all customer groups.

Before Uber, Zhenya spent 19 years with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) where she held several operating leadership roles as a Senior Partner and Managing Director of the firm. She was a leadership team member of the largest region (North America, >$5B in revenue) and practice area (Corporate Finance & Strategy, largest for BCG). In healthcare, one of Zhenya’s core areas of focus at BCG, she has worked across the full healthcare industry spectrum from R&D based biopharma and biotech, biomaterials to integrated healthcare systems, pharmacy benefit managers, payers and providers. Breadth of her knowledge of operations of each of these businesses spans from all aspects of operations, as well as corporate, therapeutic area/service line and portfolio strategy and M&A. Therapeutic areas she has expertise in include gene therapy, rare diseases, HIV, oncology, women’s and men’s health, vaccines, ophthalmology, endocrinology and cardiovascular among others.

Zhenya also serves as the CEO of The Commons Project Foundation since 2021, focusing on modernizing industries enabling with their data, starting with health. One of TCP’s flagship products, CommonHealth, is a platform for individuals to access and share all their health data, including wearables, to share with their physicians and family. Broader ongoing monitoring and deploying insights from latest innovations will help clinicians to deliver better quality care and lower overall healthcare costs.

Zhenya received an MBA from Harvard Business School and a bachelor’s degree, cum laude, from the University of Southern California. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and three daughters.

Nadia F. Altomare

Commercial Advisor

Nadia Altomare has more than 20 years of women’s healthcare diagnostics experience. Before shifting to an advisory role, Mrs. Altomare served as our Chief Commercial Officer from May 2017 to May 2023, a role in which she lead the company’s commercialization strategy and execution, accountable for the company’s marketing, public relations, sales, market access, customer service and billing functions. From May 2015 to May 2017, Mrs. Altomare served as President and then CEO and member of the Board of Directors at Abcodia Ltd, an early detection cancer diagnostics company, where she set up the U.S. subsidiary and held full P&L accountability over the global business. Prior to Abcodia, Mrs. Altomare was the Vice President & General Manager of a global DNA analysis business at ThermoFisher Scientific with full P&L accountability. Previously, Mrs. Altomare was the Vice President & General Manager of a cytogenetic DNA business at PerkinElmer. Earlier in her career, Mrs. Altomare held a number of leadership positions through a series of mergers and acquisitions and an IPO, resulting in a company ultimately acquired by PerkinElmer. Among her accomplishments was the startup, build, and scale of the ViaCord division. Mrs. Altomare is currently on the Board of Savran Technologies, a private healthcare company focused on enabling the next generation of non-invasive diagnostics. She received an MBA from Northeastern University and a B.S. in Business Administration from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

 
Michael R. Foley, MD

Medical Advisor

Dr. Michael Foley is considered a national authority on Critical Care Medicine in Obstetrics. Before joining Sera, Dr. Foley practiced Maternal-Fetal Medicine in private practice for more than 20 years and recently retired from a 10-year role as Chairman of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine Phoenix/Banner University Medicine. He was the President of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (2008) and the recipient of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine Lifetime Achievement Award (2013). He has also served as a Board Examiner in the subspecialty of Maternal-Fetal Medicine. Dr. Foley received his medical degree from Chicago Medical School in 1984. His Obstetrics and Gynecology residency and Maternal-Fetal Medicine fellowship were completed at The Ohio State University Hospital in 1988 and 1990, respectively. In addition to a long list of professional clinical accomplishments, Dr. Foley has a heart for giving back to the medical community. He is a founding instructor and faculty member for the Dan O’Keeffe, M.D. Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine’s Academy for Leadership and Development which is in its eighth year of training hundreds of medical leaders and professionals. Dr. Foley is also generous with his expertise, becoming an award-winning teacher and author. He is the Lead Editor of Obstetric Intensive Care: A Practical Manual (McGraw-Hill) which is currently in its fifth edition (2018). He is also a co-editor for Critical Care Obstetrics-Fifth and Sixth Editions (Wiley-Blackstone). We’re fortunate to be led by a medical leader whose clinical prowess is only matched by his passion for helping others. We’re fortunate to access his medical leadership, a clinical prowess that is only matched by a passion for helping others.

Austin Aerts

Chief Financial Officer​​

Austin has over a decade of finance and accounting experience in a variety of roles, and eight years of experience within the medical diagnostics industry. He joined Sera in July 2017, most recently serving as Sera's Vice President of Finance and Corporate Controller prior to his appointment as CFO. In his time with the Company, Austin has been responsible for numerous process and internal control improvements, and other vital financial responsibilities. In addition to overseeing the financial reporting, audit management, technical accounting, financial risk, cash management, and planning for the Company, Austin played a key role in the Company’s initial public offering in 2021. Prior to joining the Company, Austin worked for Myriad Genetics in the Finance department, and for Ernst & Young LLP as an assurance professional serving a variety of public and private clients, including Sera. Austin holds a Master of Accounting from the University of Utah and is an active Certified Public Accountant licensed in the State of Utah.

Jay Boniface, PhD

Chief Scientific Officer​

John J. Boniface, Ph.D. has served as our Chief Scientific Officer since November 2011. Prior to that, Dr. Boniface briefly served as our Vice President of Research from September 2011 to November 2011. In his role as Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Boniface is involved with our product development. Dr. Boniface previously served as scientist and program director for multiple biotechnology companies focused on protein discovery and small molecule and immunotherapeutic drug development, including Myrexis, Myriad Genetics, Prolexys Pharmaceuticals and Eos Biotechnology. Dr. Boniface holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Albany Medical College and a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Dr. Boniface was a post-doctoral scholar in the laboratory of Dr. Mark Davis, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University School of Medicine.

Paul Kearney, PhD

Chief Data Officer

Dr. Paul Kearney’s passion is working at the intersection of healthcare, data science and innovation where many of the hardest societal and clinical unmet needs can be found and addressed through partnership, data exploration and focused, persistent hard work. Prior to joining Sera Prognostics, Dr. Kearney co-founded multiple successful biotech companies resulting in the development and commercialization of breakthrough products in the disease areas of oncology, pregnancy and food allergy as well as technological products in bioinformatics and proteomics. Dr. Kearney has extensive experience building and nurturing integrated teams, conducting clinical research, developing evidence for improved health outcomes as well as fund raising. Dr. Kearney has published over 100 papers in diverse areas and awarded over 12 patents. Past experiences include the Institute for Systems Biology, Integrated Diagnostics, Caprion (now CellCarta), Data Incites, Bioinformatics Solutions, AllerGenis as well as a member of the Computer Science Faculty of the University of Waterloo. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto.

 
Robert G. Harrison​​

Chief Information Officer​

For more than three decades, Rob Harrison has served in several senior leadership positions of both public and private companies. His most recent appointment has been with Myriad Genetics, Inc. (NASDAQ: MYGN) as Chief Information Office Officer, where he architected the IT infrastructure that enabled Myriad to grow from its first product launch in 1996 with fewer than 100 employees in a single location, to become a leading global precision medicine company, with multiple products, more than 2,700 employees and deploying testing facilities and services in three continents. Rob successfully directed the IT integration of strategic acquisitions of four companies, simultaneously facilitating international business expansion over the past decade in the company’s growth. Serving as a long-standing board member of the Utah Technology Council, Mr. Harrison remains an active member of the Association for Information Management (AIM) Utah CIO Council, and is also a respected community leader committed to charitable causes that benefit the well-being of women.

Benjamin G. Jackson​​

General Counsel​​

Benjamin G. Jackson has served as our General Counsel since April 2021. From February 2006 to March 2021, Mr. Jackson was employed by Myriad Genetics, most recently serving as Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary. Mr. Jackson held various positions in Myriad’s Legal Department, including serving as associate general counsel prior to assuming the role of general counsel. Mr. Jackson received his J.D. from the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University and a B.S. in microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics from the University of California, Los Angeles.

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