Element Biosciences Appoints Chief Commercial Officer, General Counsel, and VP of Operations

Former Thermo Fisher Scientific, Apple, and Becton Dickinson executives bring commercial, legal, and operational expertise to Element’s leadership team

SAN DIEGO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Element Biosciences, developer of a new and disruptive DNA sequencing platform, today announced the appointments of Jeff Journey as Chief Commercial Officer, David Melaugh as General Counsel, and Jeff Labbadia as VP of Operations.

“We are thrilled to welcome Jeff, David, and Jeff to the Element team,” said Molly He, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Element. “They are strategic leaders in the technology and life science industry, each with an impressive track record in building and scaling best-in-class commercial, legal, and operations teams, respectively. As we gear up for production and commercialization of our first product, the depth and breadth of their experience will help Element deliver on our promise of empowering the scientific community with unprecedented freedom to study biology.”

Jeff Journey brings more than 30 years of leadership experience in a range of industries to the position. Most recently, Jeff was VP/General Manager at Thermo Fisher Scientific where he oversaw the $1B+ Sample Preparation business unit with full P&L, strategy, development, and commercialization responsibilities. Prior to that, he held various leadership roles in marketing, sales, service and support, and strategy at Thermo Fisher Scientific, Johnson & Johnson and GE. Jeff is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force and served for seven years as a commissioned officer.

David Melaugh joins Element from Apple, where he was the Senior Director in charge of Apple’s worldwide intellectual property litigation team. During his 11 years at Apple, David was responsible for strategic management of Apple’s global IP litigation docket during the thick of the “smartphone wars” that followed Apple’s iPhone launch – regarded as some of the most complex and wide-ranging civil litigation ever. He is the recipient of numerous national legal awards, including Managing Intellectual Property’s In-House Team of the Year. Before Apple, David was a partner at Morrison & Foerster, where he represented a wide variety of high technology companies.

Jeff Labbadia joins Element after 22 years at Becton Dickinson, where he consistently enabled commercial success through various global operations leadership roles. As a deeply analytical operations strategist, Jeff specializes in value capture, enterprise resource management, supply chain scale-up and optimization, and has tremendous experience with both life science products and regulated medical devices in high growth and large-scale environments.

“Element is entering a phase of rapid growth and expansion, with many exciting opportunities around the corner,” said Jeff Journey, Chief Commercial Officer of Element. “I’m tremendously honored to join this incredibly innovative and collaborative team at Element. We are excited to bring transformative solutions to the market that will empower more scientists and accelerate genomic discoveries.”

About Element Biosciences

Element Biosciences is a multi-disciplinary life science company currently focused on developing disruptive DNA sequencing technology for research and diagnostic markets. Through innovating every fundamental element of a sequencing system, Element will empower customers with affordable high-quality data and an improved user experience, which in turn will accelerate scientific discoveries and broaden the use of genomic medicine. To learn more about Element, please visit www.elementbiosciences.com.

Contacts

Nicole Pack

nicole@venrock.com