Duane Sword

Mr. Sword is Vice President Business Development at WaveGuide. He is an active board member and retained advisor with several companies involved in medical diagnostics, photonics-based systems, and portable analytical platforms. With more than two decades of experience spanning large publicly held companies and leadership roles in privately held ventures in a variety of test, measurement and spectroscopy businesses.

Mr. Sword’s career began in product management with Hewlett-Packard (now Agilent Technologies) and held assignments around the world in business development overseeing direct sales, integrators, and channel partners. Mr. Sword has lived and immersed himself in roles based in Asia, Europe and North America with team leadership and sales quotas ranges from $1M to $250MM.

With VC-backed Ahura Scientific, Mr. Sword was Vice President Global Sales and Marketing, forging the company into the market leader in portable optical (Raman and FTIR) spectroscopy devices addressing the needs of first responders through pharmaceutical quality control in manufacturing to anti-counterfeit screening. In 2010, Ahura Scientific was acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific, where Mr. Sword then assumed global business development for a larger portfolio of portable analytical instruments, markets and commercial specialists following the integration of Polychromix with portable NIR (near infrared).

As CEO of Precisive, Mr. Sword secured the capital and built a strong cross-functional team with the Founder & President. Precisive was a pioneer with an all-optical hydrocarbon composition sensor utilized in the natural gas industry from extraction, to petrochemical production through to downstream applications including power generation. MKS Instruments acquired Precisive in 2015.

A member and investor with the Launchpad Venture Group, a member of the Board with MultiSensor Scientific (optical gas imaging sensor platform) and an active member of the Boston area venture community with TechStars, MassVentures, MIT Enterprise Forum and MassChallenge. Mr. Sword has an undergraduate BSEE with 1st Class Honors from RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) in Melbourne Australia.