Tivic Health management is grounded in deep expertise. Tivic’s team of motivated professionals have a talent for innovation and a deep conviction for developing health-tech medical devices that are non-invasive, drug-free and address chronic healthcare conditions.
Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder
Jennifer is a co-founder and has served as our Chief Executive Officer and as a Director. Jennifer served as the CEO and Chief Strategy Officer of the U.S. subsidiary of Thin Film Electronics ASA. She worked for Xerox PARC for over 20 years, where she held multiple go-to-market roles, including as the Director of Business Development. Ms. Ernst previously served as a director of FlexTech Alliance, the U.S. national consortium for flexible and printed electronics, for three years, including one year as the Chair. Ms. Ernst earned her Master of Business Administration degree from Santa Clara University.
Jennifer has been featured in Inc., The HealthCare Technology Report, and Thrive Global as a female leader who is shaking up things in the industry.
Jennifer Ernst
Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder
Chief Financial Officer
Veronica is a strategic and collaborative executive with two and a half decades of finance and accounting experience, specializing in scaling finance organizations in early development stage to post commercial, large international corporations and IPOs. She has held various senior financial executive roles in both publicly listed and private-equity backed companies in the medical technology and life sciences industries, assisting with the navigation through transitions between the different phases of business and fundraising efforts. Prior to joining the Company, Ms. Cai was the Vice President of Accounting & Finance at RefleXion Medical, the Principal Accounting Officer and Corporate Controller at Catalyst Biosciences, the Assistant Controller at Zogenix, an Inspections Specialist at the Public Company Accounting Board (PCAOB), and a Senior Manager at Ernst & Young.
Veronica Cai
Chief Financial Officer
Chief Scientific Officer
Blake leads Tivic Health’s clinical and scientific research. In addition to his full-time role at Tivic Health, he is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medicine at UCSF. Blake is an expert in neuromodulation device development and has served as a research executive and consultant for medical device and pharma companies including Rio Grande Neurosciences and EMD Serono/Pfizer. Blake’s prior research in neuroscience and immunology has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and philanthropic donors, yielding high-impact journal publications.
Ph.D., Neuroscience, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Sc.B., Neuroscience, Brown University.
Blake Gurfein, PhD
Chief Scientific Officer
Chief Operating Officer
Ryan serves as Chief Operating Officer with 18 years of experience in global supply chain, systems infrastructure, and sales operations in industries that range from automotive, medical supply, and consumer electronics. Ryan served as Global Director of Strategic Operations for Mars, Inc., General Manager of Operations for Medelita, LLC, a medical apparel and manufacturing company. Prior to that, he worked as Senior Director of Operations for Pinpoint Resources Group, a software technology consulting company and as Hedge Fund Financial Reporting Analyst for J.P. Morgan. He is is seasoned in environments that range from Fortune 500 companies (J.P. Morgan, BestBuy, and Toyota) to bootstrap startups, while specializing in scaling for global omnichannel logistics and e-commerce marketplaces.
Ryan Sabia
Chief Operating Officer
Senior VP, Quality Assurance & Regulatory Affairs
Sanjay is a hands-on technologist and strategist implementing and enhancing regulatory affairs, and quality systems for medical devices, diagnostic systems, biologics, evidence-based pharma, and combination products. He has been a lead regulatory and quality liaison responsible for developing and implementing key quality and regulatory functional strategies including obtaining complex approvals and clearances from the US FDA and international agencies. He has harmonized key quality & regulatory strategies and processes and has worked for several industry leaders in the past including Corning, Johnson and Johnson, and Thermo Fisher. Sanjay is certified as a Six SIgma Blackbelt and earned his Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of Alabama.
Sanjay Ahuja, Ph.D.
Senior VP, Quality Assurance & Regulatory Affairs
VP, Engineering and Manufacturing
Chandrasekhar is in charge of product development, supply chain, procurement, manufacturing as well as identifying, building and optimizing partnerships with vendors related to product design and production. Since joining Tivic Health as the 1st full-time employee, Chandrasekhar has played an important role in the product development and manufacturing. Prior to Tivic Health, Chandrasekhar worked as Director of Field Applications Engineering at Thinfilm Electronics Inc. and built field teams across APAC, EMEA and North America. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Instrumentation from Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS, Pilani) , Master’s and Doctoral degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Chandrasekhar Durisety, PhD
VP, Engineering and Manufacturing
Our Board of Directors bring their expertise and contributions in consumer health and technology to the Tivic Health team, as we scale up commercial operations and develop new bioelectronic therapies.
Jennifer is a consummate hi-tech business developer with a history of developing markets from new technologies such as Thin Film Electronics ($480M market cap in 5 yrs) with Xerox PARC. With over 20 years at Xerox PARC, she held multiple go-to-market roles and marketed multiple award-winning products. MBA, Santa Clara University. Jennifer has been featured in Authority Magazine and Thrive Global as a female leader who is shaking up things in the industry.
Dean Zikria has served as a director since July 16, 2019. Dean brings deep industry experience in allergy and asthma as well as other chronic diseases to the Board. From 2019 to 2021, Mr. Zikria served as the CEO of Mind Machine LLC, a marketing/advertising agency, where he was also the Founder and continues to serve as Chairman. He has previously served as CEO of Spirosure, a FeNO detection company for asthma diagnostics, from 2014 to 2017. He has also previously served as head of global marketing for Johnson & Johnson’s Animas Corporation within their medical device & diagnostics division. He was head of strategy for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals U.S. Cardiovascular Unit, a division with approximately $7 billion in annual revenues. We believe that Mr. Zikria is qualified to serve as a member of our Board of Directors due to his experience in the allergy and asthma industries, as well as his experience in strategic planning, scenario planning and analysis, and mergers and acquisitions.
Thanks to our accomplished experts offering innovation and sound advice. We rely on high-quality expertise and scientific support from the medical community.
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