Leadership

Executive Team Leaders

Melissa (Liss) Easy

Melissa (Liss) Easy

Founder and Strategic Accounts

Brett Kleger

Brett Kleger

Chief Commercial Officer

Elisa Cascade

Elisa Cascade

Chief Product Officer

Stuart Thiede

Stuart Thiede

President, Payments

Eric Delente

President, Patient Solutions

Brian Fisher

President, Trial Management

Melissa (Liss) Easy

Melissa (Liss) Easy

Founder and Strategic Accounts

Founder of DrugDev and now focused on Strategic Accounts, Melissa (Liss) Easy has worked as a consultant for CROs and more pharmaceutical companies than she dares count. The insight she accumulated in these roles, and the inefficiencies and resulting frustrations she witnessed, laid the concept for DrugDev. From its humble birth in 2009, Melissa is very proud of how her ‘first child’ has blossomed and DrugDev’s success to date in carrying out its mission of helping sponsors and CROs do more trials.

Originally from Sydney Australia, Melissa currently lives in Philadelphia, USA. She loves traveling, drinking wine and is a big “foodie.” (You are correct to note that exercise is not mentioned on the list of loves!). Melissa is always trying out new recipes and restaurants with her husband Mark, and young sons Max and Sam.

Liss has been awarded numerous honours including being named as a PharmaVOICE 100 most influential people in life sciences, winning the ‘Partnerships in Clinical Trials Woman of the Year Award’ and being named by the Philadelphia Business Journal as a ‘Healthcare Innovator’, one of the ‘Top 40 Under 40’ and a ‘Woman of Distinction’.

 

Brett Kleger

Brett Kleger

Chief Commercial Officer

As DrugDev’s CCO, Brett Kleger is responsible for leading DrugDev’s commercial strategy and development. He spearheads the DrugDev initiative to bring new capabilities to market, and “puts his money where his mouth is” to take responsibility for the success of new DrugDev solutions or businesses, including a seamless customer experience.

Brett enjoys challenging the status quo and creating solutions that improve critical business processes. Prior to DrugDev, he created global solutions for IMS Health, a market leading healthcare analytics provider, where he founded a division focused on clinical trials. Previously he was a leader at Acurian, growing the company from its infancy, startup stage to a market leader in patient recruitment.

Brett holds a business degree from the University of Maryland, and a juris doctorate from Villanova School of Law. His type-A personality brings structure to everything in life, while his humor allows him to never take life too seriously. He is a proud father of two boys, caring husband to one wife, devoted dog owner, and an avid sports enthusiast. When not working you can find Brett on the sports fields or courts as a coach, participant, or fan.

Elisa Cascade

Elisa Cascade

Chief Product Officer

As Chief Product Officer, Elisa is responsible for the overall development and growth of the DrugDev Spark clinical operations suite. In addition, Elisa served as architect of the award-winning DrugDev Golden Number, the industry’s universal identifier for global site facilities and personnel used by the Investigator Databank, the TransCelerate Investigator Registry, and leading pharmaceutical companies and CROs. Elisa’s personal mission is to significantly reduce the time required to integrate disparate data sources to help pharmaceutical companies make better decisions in clinical study planning, feasibility, and site selection and decrease the administrative burden for investigators.

 

Elisa brings to DrugDev almost 20 years in strategic healthcare consulting, and is a nationally recognized expert in the analysis of health data. Elisa has an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and industry leading experience in the capture and integration of complex healthcare data. Prior to joining DrugDev, Elisa worked for 15 years as a Vice President at Quintiles where she had responsibilities in consulting and patient-centric research.

 

Elisa has an MBA from The Wharton School and a B.S. with High Honors and High Distinction from the University of Michigan.

Stuart Thiede

Stuart Thiede

President, Payments

Stuart Thiede is responsible for leading the highly skilled and experienced professionals who deliver investigator grant payment services to clinical trial sponsors and CROs. Stuart brings nearly 30 years of experience to DrugDev from companies that provide technology solutions to their clients, with ten years of this experience specific to companies providing software and professional service solutions to the pharmaceutical industry.

 

Stuart’s diverse background includes significant executive roles in finance, operations, service delivery, and account management in enterprises ranging from a Fortune 500 technology company to a high-growth software and professional service mid-market company, to two small start-up enterprises. He also has significant international experience, including an expatriate assignment in Europe and a finance director role for a Latin American division of Unisys Corporation. Stuart has a B.S. in Accounting and an M.B.A. from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio.

Eric Delente

President, Patient Solutions

Eric has more than 20 years of experience leading technical and creative teams in the design and implementation of numerous award-winning online science, healthcare and clinical research web applications – most recently by leading SecureConsent (acquired by DrugDev), the industry’s definitive e-consent solution. His professional focus has consistently centered on the academic, medical and scientific communities, and he has delivered applications, web portals and back-office tools for clients as diverse as The New York Academy of Sciences, Wolters Kluwer, Elsevier, Swets, The American College of Physicians, The National Cancer Institute, The European Society of Cardiology, The Food and Drug Administration, The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, The American Red Cross and many of the top 20 Pharmaceutical companies. Eric’s profound understanding of the Science and Healthcare sectors, academic sectors, online publishing, coupled with his track record of developing complex but intuitive electronic data-driven applications makes him uniquely qualified to lead these technical teams

Eric has accumulated extensive experience working with both proven and cutting-edge technologies from Microsoft as well as Google, Oracle, Sun and open-source J2EE solutions. He also has expertise in designing complex database systems optimized for web delivery and utilizing visualization technologies that help time-challenged end users and administrators quickly get to the information they need.

Previously, Eric was the director of Electronic Publishing at Multimedia Software, LLC in Frederick MD where he landed after leaving NYC, where he owned and operated one of the first all-digital audio/video facilities in the world. There he led the production of program promotion materials for MTV, Nickelodeon and several other Viacom-owned networks.  As an engineer, violinist and composer, Eric has recorded and performed with Lenny Kravitz, Vanessa Paradis,  Daddy-O, Scott Ambush (Spyro Gyra), Scotty Hard and many others.

Brian Fisher

President, Trial Management

As President of the Trial Management business unit, Brian is responsible for strategic growth, enterprise-wide customer engagements, operations, financial reporting and client support for Startup and Trial Conduct solutions on the DrugDev Spark clinical operations suite. Brian joined the company’s Boston office in 2013 as Chief Operating Officer.

Prior to joining DrugDev, Brian spent 15 years working for a variety of domestic and international, public and privately-held companies within the technology and consumer sectors with a successful background of growing startup technology companies. Originally from Connecticut, he received his bachelor’s degree in accounting from the Carroll School of Management at Boston College in 1998 and his CPA in the state of Massachusetts in 2002.

Brian lives with his wife and two children in Duxbury, MA, but the family is oftentimes hanging out at their vacation home in NH. When not in the office Brian spends most of his time outdoors, either on the slopes, at the beach, or participating in some sort of sporting activity.