Tamara Elias, M.D. has been avidly involved with healthcare for over 20 years across a wide spectrum of diverse experiences, beginning with medical school, extending into surgical residency, followed by healthcare strategic consulting, private equity investing, corporate strategy and business development, product innovation and P&L, inclusive of board member positions.
Most recently in her role as VP, Global Partnerships & Innovation at Merck, Tamara lead global “non-product” ("around the pill") commercial partnerships for the Commercial Organization with start-ups and established players across the value chain. Her team’s work included building new journeys to care for patients by partnering with 3rd parties, scouting of relevant partners, execution of win-win contracts and deal structures, partnering with markets to share best practices and scale based on local successes, and external monitoring of key healthcare trends as it affects our business.
Her prior role was with Aetna as VP, Clinical Product Development, owning a $20M P&L, where she focused on optimizing and rationalizing the existing clinical product portfolio for all lines of business. At Becton Dickinson, she was VP, Corporate Strategy and Business Development for the $8B revenue Medical Segment. In this role, Tamara engineered the creation of the Digital Health Business Unit - from designing the organization to securing funding to hiring the team and getting the approval of the first concept in digital diabetes (now launched). She was a member of the Leadership Team and worked to advance the overall strategic direction and growth for the medical segment, including the $24B acquisition of CR Bard which closed in December 2017.
Tamara joined Becton Dickinson from Essex Woodlands Healthcare Partners, a private equity firm, where she was a Partner and co-led the healthcare services and healthcare IT growth equity practice and assisted with the management of the medical device growth equity portfolio and practice. In over 8 years with the firm, she served on several boards.
Prior to Essex Woodlands, Tamara spent five years as a strategy consultant at McKinsey, where she advised pharmaceutical, diagnostic and device companies in product commercialization and M&A.
Tamara currently serves on the Board of Directors of Avinger (NASDAQ: AVGR), a public medtech company in the PVD space, as Chairman of the Nominating/Governance Committee and a Member of the Audit and Comp Committees, as well as on the board of REVA Medical LLC, also in the PVD space and BehaVR in the mental health arena.
Tamara holds a BA in both Biology and Anthropology from Yale University, obtained her M.D. from The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and pursued a general surgery residency at Massachusetts General Hospital.