Rick Berenson

Rick is the Managing Director of Venzyme Catalyst, LLC, a consultancy that provides executive services and strategic guidance to early-stage companies. He has raised or helped raise more than $93M in private and non-dilutive capital. A former McKinsey & Company consultant who started his post-graduate career as a member of technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Rick received a J.D.-M.B.A. from Harvard Business and Law Schools in 1984 and is a magna cum laude graduate in Economics from Harvard College.

Rick also currently serves as CEO of HeartLander Surgical, Inc. (robot for minimally invasive beating heart surgery) and as strategic CFO of SimulConsult Inc. (diagnostic decision support software for rare diseases). He is a member of the boards of Capillary Biomedical, Inc. (a novel insulin infusion set), Massachusetts Medical Angels (premier early life sciences stage investment group in Boston), and the Freedom Trail Foundation (history tourism). Rick also served as the CEO and co-founder of Thermalin Inc., a biotechnology company developing novel, insulin-based therapies for diabetes. Over 10 years at Thermalin, Rick assembled a world-class team of scientists that created clinical-candidate novel insulin molecules and invented disruptive insulin delivery devices. To support this effort, he consummated industry partnerships with Sanofi and Eli Lilly and raised $63M in equity and non-dilutive support. A serial entrepreneur, Rick has also served as CEO or COO of ten other companies in consumer products manufacturing, knowledge management, new media, entertainment industry technology, manufacturing software, healthcare information and services, healthcare market research, anti-infectives drug discovery, diagnostic reference laboratory services, and cancer immunotherapeutics.