Board of Directors
Robert Greenberg, M.D., Ph.D.
Robert J. Greenberg, M.D., Ph.D., is the Executive Chairman of the Alfred Mann Foundation. He was a co-founder and former CEO and Chairman of the Board of Second Sight Medical Products, Inc. (NASDAQ: EYES) in Los Angeles, California. Dr. Greenberg is a leader in the field of neural prosthetics – having developed and brought to market the world’s most advanced implantable neural stimulator, the Argus II visual prostheses, to treat retinitis pigmentosa, a form of blindness. Dr. Greenberg was also a medical reviewer at the FDA’s Office of Device Evaluation. Dr. Greenberg is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, has over 260 issued US patents and over 100 international patents, and has published over 60 articles. He received MD and PhD degrees from The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Greenberg joined AMF in 2004 as Chairman of the Board of Directors.
Richard Waugh, Jr.
Former Chief Financial Officer of Northrop Grumman Corporation
Retired member California and Ohio Bar Associations
Retired member California Society of Certified Public Accountants
Mimi Danihel
Mari (“Mimi”) L. Danihel was raised in Wyoming and later moved to California, where her father was the chief of staff at Lancaster Community Hospital. She recently retired from Danihel Property Management, the business she inherited from her late husband, Leo Danihel, a native of Slovakia and past President of the World Slovak Congress. Ms. Danihel became a Slovak citizen in October 2004. She was named the American Heart Association of Los Angeles 2010 Crystal Heart Honoree at its annual “Go Red for Women” Luncheon. Ms. Danihel is also a Director at the Alfred E. Mann Foundation and the Los Angeles World Affairs Council.
Kenneth Weatherwax
Mr. Weatherwax received his BSE in Mechanical Engineering from Princeton University. After working as an engineer and risk assessor in the utility energy transmission/distribution industry, he received his JD from the University of California and clerked on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. After joining Irell & Manella LLP in Los Angeles, he practiced as a patent litigator for ten years before co-founding Lowenstein & Weatherwax LLP, which in 2019 was ranked as the best performing law firm in history in United States Patent and Trademark Office inter partes review proceedings. He joined the Alfred Mann Foundation’s Board in 2018.
David Gill
David N. Gill has over 30 years’ experience in senior operating and financial roles in the medical device industry. He was most recently the President and Chief Financial Officer of EndoChoice Holdings, Inc., a publicly traded medical device company focused on gastroenterology products that was acquired in November 2016. Earlier in his career, Mr. Gill served in a variety of senior executive leadership roles for several medical device companies, including TransEnterix, NxStage Medical, CTI Molecular Imaging, Inc., Novoste Corporation and Dornier Medical Systems. Over his career, Mr. Gill has taken four companies public and raised more than $1 Billion in financing. He currently serves as a director of the following public companies: Y-mAbs Therapeutics, Evolus, Stonebridge Biopharma and Strata Skin Sciences.
David Scott
David has more than 20 years’ experience building and leading high-performing teams at both start-ups and Fortune 500 companies related to Digital Surgery, Digital Health ecosystems, surgical robotics, and medical imaging and diagnostics. Currently, he is with Apple’s Special Projects Group leading new R&D initiatives. He has a passion for disruptive innovations and has built three startup companies which have all had successful exits. Prior to joining Apple, David was the Chief Operating Officer for Verb Surgical, a joint venture between Google and Johnson & Johnson to build the next generation Digital Health and robotic surgery platform. He is a co-founder of Varioscale, Inc., a start-up venture dedicated to bringing ultra-high-resolution laser etching technology to the semiconductor community and lab-on-a-chip applications. He also led the next generation medical imaging and technologies team for the daVinci robot platform at Intuitive Surgical. He was the VP of R&D for Optimedica and later Division Vice President at Abbott Medical Optics where he led programs in laser cataract surgery and laser vision correction. David has been awarded several patents in x-ray imaging, medical endoscopy and laser surgery applications. David holds a Bachelor of Science in aerospace engineering from the University of Kansas and a Masters of Science in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Management Team
John Petrovich
Chief Executive Officer
Mr. Petrovich graduated from USC with a BS in Finance and received his JD from UCLA. He has over twenty years’ experience in private practice as a corporate finance lawyer, and over ten years of senior executive experience in biotech and biomedical companies. This includes serving as CEO of Calando Pharmaceuticals and Insert Therapeutics, both startups launched out of Caltech to develop cancer therapeutics. John joined the Alfred Mann Foundation in 2010.
Farah Boroomand
Chief Financial Officer
Ms. Boroomand is a UCLA graduate in Applied Math with over thirty years’ experience in accounting, financial management and reporting, the vast majority of which was in the medical device industry. Before joining AMF, she served as an Accounting Manager with Advanced Bionics and as a Senior Financial Analyst with Ensign-Bickford Aerospace & Defense Company. Farah joined the Alfred Mann Foundation in 2001.
Eric Grigsby, MD, MBA
Chief Medical Officer
Dr. Grigsby graduated from Brown University with an undergraduate degree in Biology and Economics. He then completed medical school at Boston University School of Medicine, and completed residency training in Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He received his Masters in Business Administration, in Health Sector Management, from Duke University. Professionally, Dr. Grigsby was Director of the hospital pain service at Mayo Clinic, and was later Founding Director of the University of California at Davis Pain Center. He has been in private practice of pain management in Napa, California for 20 years. Eric has been with Alfred Mann Foundation since 2016.
Nick Talbot, Ph.D.
Vice President of Research and Technology
Mr. Talbot has worked in the field of implantable neurostimulation devices, including cochlear implants and visual prostheses since 1993. After receiving his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from UC Berkeley, he joined Second Sight Medical Products, Inc. and was a major contributor to the development of the first FDA approved implantable retinal prosthesis, the Argus II. More recently he led the design team that developed the Orion 1, an implantable cortical visual prosthesis. Mr. Talbot is an inventor on 82 issued US medical device patents.
Mike Perrin
Vice President, Quality Assurance, Regulatory Affairs, and Operations
After 16 years at Litton Aero Products, where he created and implemented their first quality system based on ISO standards, Mr. Perrin joined AMF in 2001 as a quality inspector. Since then he has worked to develop AMF’s quality management system. He also spent four years in the U.S. Air Force as a Navigation System Specialist, and earned a four-year degree from the Community College of the Air Force in Electrical Systems. In 2007, Mr. Perrin became an American Society for Quality Certified Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence. Mike has been a part of the Alfred Mann Foundation since 2001.
Karen Morris
Senior Director, HR and Facilities Management
Ms. Morris began her career in the manufacturing industry and spent over 20 years in the Information Technology and Human Resources arena. She joined AMF in 2001 as the Human Resources Manager, added responsibilities in Facilities Management, and was promoted to Director in 2010, where she contributes to the company’s mission and leadership. She began her education in the field of Computer Science and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Management. She also earned her California General Contractor’s License where she works with sub contractors and facilities management.
Valma Klein
Director, Clinical Affairs
Ms. Klein began her career with Telectronics Pacing Systems in France as their Field Clinical Engineer Manager. Ms. Klein relocated to the United States to work for Clinical Research at St Jude Medical’s Cardiac Rhythm Management Division (or CRMD) in California. Ms. Klein joined AMF in 2013 as Director of Clinical Affairs. She graduated from Marquette University with a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering.
Philip Lee
Assistant General Counsel
Mr. Lee has over 20 years of legal and IP experience, with stints at Boston Scientific, Advanced Bionics, and Pennie & Edmonds LLP. Prior to his legal career, he worked at Medtronic for seven years in R&D roles for a cardiac assist project. He received his JD from University of Minnesota, and Bachelors and MS in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins and Northwestern University, respectively. Phil joined the Alfred Mann Foundation in 2016.
Team Members
Alfred Mann Foundation’s expertise collectively held by our engineering and development team is unparalleled in the medical device field. Working in a not-for-profit environment allows them the freedom to undertake seemingly impossible, risk-intensive projects that might be too costly or too risky for profit-driven companies. Among our employees we have many with doctorates and other advanced degrees, military veterans, and people who hail from more than 20 foreign countries and, between them, speak more than a dozen languages. Our diversity of background paired with a combined hundreds of years of experience in biomedical, mechanical and electrical engineering, quality control, software design, patent law and clinical expertise put us in a unique position to solve some of the most challenging problems in medicine and bring these products to patients who will benefit from them the most.
