Albert F. Hummel – President and CEO

Mr. Hummel is an executive with a history of success in the pharmaceutical industry and elsewhere. From 1969 to 1982 he served as Managing Director with Merrill Lynch Capital Markets. From January 1983 until December of 1990, he was a Co-Founder, director and President for Bradley Hummel and Company, Inc. and its successor company, and a member of the New York Stock Exchange from 1983 until 1987. Mr. Hummel was introduced to the drug industry in the 1970s as a corporate finance professional with Merrill Lynch. Bradley Hummel was a boutique investment bank with a specialty in pharmaceutical mergers and acquisitions. As Hatch-Waxman was becoming law in the mid-1980s, Mr. Hummel assisted in assembling a number of smaller companies together to create Watson Pharmaceuticals (NYSE: WPI), one of the earliest major successes in the generic industry. Mr. Hummel was subsequently asked to serve on the board of Watson and also to become the founding CFO.. Today Watson is a highly-regarded $2.6 billion company with 5,000 employees and a market cap of $3.6 billion. Mr. Hummel still serves as a director of Watson.
After establishing Watson and taking it public, Mr. Hummel temporarily left the pharmaceutical industry to execute a unique real-property roll-up strategy, becoming co-founder, general partner and director of Affordable Residential Communities, LLC from June 1994 until July 1997. At the time, ARC was the only national firm accumulating a particular class of underperforming assets in the western and Midwestern United States. The business quickly grew to more than $1 billion in assets, and was taken to the public in the form of a REIT in 1995.
Mr. Hummel has been a Director of Cobrek since its formation in 2008, and of its predecessor company since 1998. He became President in 1998 and CEO of the predecessor in 2001 at the request of the Company’s venture capital investors. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Obagi Medical Products, joining that company’s board in 2005.

Bruce Ronsen, Ph.D. – Chief Scientist

Dr. Ronsen has been a director since 2001. Dr. Ronsen earned his doctorate in Pharmacology from The University of Health Sciences/The Chicago Medical School. He served as consultant to Cobrek’s predecessor from May to December 1994. He was senior consultant at Ronsen Research Associates from March 1985 until December 1994. From December 1987 to January of 1991 he served as Vice President of Research and Discovery for Greenwich Pharmaceuticals, Inc. From 1983 to 1985, he served as President of Naska Pharmacal, a subsidiary of Darby Drug Co., and from 1982 to 1983 he served as Vice President, Scientific Affairs, Bay Laboratories. From July 1978 to December 1981 he served as Market Manager for Packard Instrument Co., then a division of United Technologies. From November 1975 to July 1978 he served as product manager and technical liaison for Millipore Corporation. He is the author of numerous publications, and inventor of several medicinal chemical patents.

James L. Kadow - VP, Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance

Mr. Kadow has more than 35 years of regulatory and GMP experience. Mr. Kadow founded Kadow Associates Ltd. In 1989, an independent regulatory and GMP consulting firm. He worked with numerous pharmaceutical/ medical device companies in that time. He is also the founder and principle of Kadow and Myles Inc., a company established to provide operational, engineering, and compliance assistance to companies in the chemical, pharmaceutical and medical device industries. Prior to that he spent 8 years as Director of Quality Assurance at Searle Pharmaceuticals. Prior to his time at Searle, he spent 15 years as an FDA investigator and compliance officer in the Chicago regional FDA office. He is affiliated with the GPHA, DIA, RAPS, PDA, ASQC. Mr. Kadow provides expertise in the areas of Regulatory Affairs, GMP compliance and Quality Assurance. He is very knowledgeable in FDA regulations and procedures. As an investor in Pentech he actively advises the board on FDA regulations.

Jeffrey F. Grolig – VP Finance and Controller

Mr. Grolig has been Controller since 2000. Mr. Grolig started his career at Morris Tulsky & Co. Certified Public Accountants in 1987 and remained with that firm until August 1994. From August 1994 until May 1997, he was an Audit Manager at the accounting firm of Friduss Lukee & Schiff where he performed certified audits and tax consulting to a broad client base. Mr. Grolig then became Controller of Spiral Helix, Inc. a manufacturer of steel fabrication machinery for the HVAC and filtercore industries. In March 199 8 -he joined Telcom Midwest LLC, a telecommunications company in Buffalo Grove, as Controller. In April 1999, Telcom Midwest merged with Frontier Network Systems, and Mr. Grolig was a key part of the management team that integrated the two companies. Mr. Grolig earned his BS in Accounting from Northeastern Illinois University in 1986 and passed the Illinois C.P.A. exam in May of 1988.

Glen Ishikawa - Vice President of Technical Services and Quality Assurance

Mr. Ishikawa has over 30 years experience in research and manufacturing in the health care and nutrition industries, having held leadership positions in analytical chemistry, food ingredient and drug research, and Quality Assurance. Prior to joining Cobrek, Mr. Ishikawa held the position of Director CMC at Immtech Pharmaceuticals and has held various positions within the Pharmacia/Monsanto/NutraSweet/G.D. Searle group of companies. Mr. Ishikawa held the Director of R&D position at The NutraSweet Company supporting the FDA approval and commercial launch of the high intensity sweetener, neotame, served as the Quality Assurance Department Leader in Monsanto’s Nutrition Division, and held positions at G.D. Searle in analytical chemistry, biochemistry and documentation. Mr. Ishikawa served on the National Academies, Food Chemicals Codex Committee from 1998-2004. He holds a B.S. in Chemistry from the Bradley University, an M.S. in Biochemistry from Roosevelt University, an MBA from DePaul University, and an M.S. in Pharmaceutical Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance from Temple University.

Ellen M. Rust, J.D. - Senior Consultant in Regulatory Affairs

Ms. Rust provides advice in determining effective regulatory strategies, identifying potential regulatory and quality issues, and she assists the Company in the preparation and submissions of ANDAs. In the past, she also has helped a number of firms in preparing and reviewing CMC documentation such as manufacturing records, manufacturing validation protocols, packaging records, specifications, analytical methods, and stability protocols to ensure compliance with existing submissions requirements, and current regulations. Prior to establishing her consulting practice, she was Regulatory Affairs Manager with Bone Care International Inc. in Madison, Wisconsin.  Earlier she worked in the pharmaceutical industry for over 15 years, in Regulatory Affairs, Quality Assurance and Analytical Research and Development.

James D. Lumsden – Chairman, Board of Directors

Mr. Lumsden has been a director since 1998, and became Chairman of the Board in October of 2000. Mr. Lumsden is a Managing Partner with Fairview Management Group, LLC, a private investment firm based in Raleigh, North Carolina. He has more than 25 years experience in corporate finance and private equity investing. Mr. Lumsden is a founder of Franklin Street/Fairview Capital (together with its predecessor entities, "Fairview") and has served as its President and Managing Principal since 1992. Mr. Lumsden began his financial career in 1981 as an investment banker with Kidder, Peabody and later Merrill Lynch Capital Markets in New York. In 1986, he returned to North Carolina to establish a private investing operation. Fairview, the firm he founded, was responsible for the investment of approximately $100 million of private equity interests. Mr. Lumsden was the founder, director and commitment committee member for a separate $30 million mezzanine fund raised under Fairview's control. In addition, he is a founding general partner of The Halifax Group, a national buyout fund manager. He has served on the boards of most of Fairview's private and public corporate investments, several non-affiliated corporations, and professional and civic organizations, including the N.C. Venture Capital Association, the Raleigh Arts Commission (Chairman, 1998), the N.C. Museum of Art Foundation (Chairman, 2004-2005), and the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences. From 1994 until 1997 he was a Trustee of St. Mary's College. Mr. Lumsden earned his B.A. in History and M.B.A. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1975 and 1981, respectively.

William L. Rogers – Director

Bill Rogers joined the Cobrek board in 2009. Mr. Rogers brings to our board the wisdom and experience of one of the country’s most experienced and successful private equity investors and managers. Over his 30-plus years in business and across innumerable transactions of all types, Mr. Rogers has earned respect worldwide not only for his gifts as a businessman and investor, but also for his integrity and humanity as well. 

Mr. Rogers began his career in accounting and quickly made Partner with KPMG Peat Marwick. In 1979 the firm selected him to go on loan to President Carter to organize the first White House Conference on Small Business. Subsequently, he was invited to become controller for the President’s re-election campaign.

Mr. Rogers began his career in private investments shortly thereafter by becoming an owner and manager of a struggling specialty food processor in rural Kansas. Under his guidance, the company adopted a new strategy which transformed it into a major operating and financial success. This success was realized when he merged it into an entity controlled by Richard Rainwater and Bass Brothers Enterprises of Fort Worth, Texas. 

In 1983 Mr. Rogers was invited to become one of the first employees of the Robert M. Bass Group, a new private investment entity being created that year. He joined two other professionals, David Bonderman and Tom Barrack, in constituting the initial investment team for RMBG. Over the ensuing years, this team delivered exceptional results for RMBG, finally leaving in 1988 to create, individually and together, investing entities of their own. Two of the firms they created, Texas Pacific Group (www.tpg.com) and Colony Capital (www.colonycapital.com), today rank among the largest and most successful private equity firms on the planet. Mssrs. Rogers, Bonderman and Barrack have maintained close professional and personal relationships ever since their first days at RMBG. 

Mr. Rogers became a founding partner and principal of Colony Capital, which began operations in 1991. Colony has since purchased more than $40 billion in real estate and related assets, and today operates out of 14 offices in twelve countries. In 1999, Mssrs. Rogers, Bonderman and Barrack founded another firm, The Halifax Group, to pursue LBO and growth opportunities specifically in the mid-cap sector. During its first ten years of existence, Mr. Rogers served as Halifax’s Chairman, overseeing more than $3 billion in mid-cap transactions. 

Mr. Rogers is also the founder and principal owner of RSF Land & Cattle, a real estate investment and development firm in New Mexico. RSF has delivered more than one million square feet of new retail and commercial properties over the past decade and is developing 6,700 acres into a master planned community zoned for 20,000 residential units. More recently, he and two other long-time associates created Century Bridge Capital, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, which is pursuing major international projects in a variety of fields, including housing, agribusiness and hydro power, in China, India, Pakistan and elsewhere in east Asia. 

Mr. Rogers received his B.S. from the University of North Carolina in 1969, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa. In addition to being a director of Cobrek and one of its original investors, Mr. Rogers serves on the board of Waddell & Reed, a NYSE-listed asset manager of approximately $70 billion in liquid assets. He is a former trustee of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, where he received his M.B.A. in 1972 as a Vehon Scholar. He is a member and former Chairman of the Board of Visitors for the Kenan Flagler Business School (UNC-Chapel Hill) and serves on the Board of Advisors for the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University.