Leadership

Meet the leadership team behind
Aspira Women's Health

Executive Leadership Team

  • 'photograph of Nicole Sandford

    Nicole Sandford

    President and CEO

  • 'photograph of Robert Beechey

    Robert Beechey

    Chief Financial Officer

  • 'photograph of Charles J. Dunton

    Charles J. Dunton, M.D.

    Interim Chief Medical Officer

  • 'photograph of Minh Merchant

    Minh Merchant

    General Counsel and Corporate Secretary

  • 'photograph of Michael Newton

    Michael Newton

    Head of Commercial

  • 'photograph of Greg Richard

    Greg Richard

    Head of Corporate Strategy, Reimbursement and Managed Care

  • 'photograph of Sean Rowe

    Sean Rowe

    Head of Technology

Board of Directors

Valerie B. Palmieri

Executive Chairwoman of the Board

Valerie Palmieri was appointed Executive Chairwoman of the Board on March 1, 2022. Prior to this Valerie served as President and CEO of Aspira Women's Health from January 2015, initially joining Aspira Women's Health as Chief Operating Officer in October 2014.

During her tenure at Aspira Women’s Health, Valerie was the architect of the company’s mission, vision and strategy which has led to the company becoming a premier women’s health enterprise. This began with the endorsement of OVA1 by medical society guidelines, payer coverage for the majority of the lives the US,  the creation of a second generation technology, developing an expanded high growth product pipeline known as the “Patient Lifecycle”, and ultimately creating a new corporate brand to serve the company for years to come. OVA1 has touched over 155,837 patient lives to date.

Valerie brings to Aspira Women's Health close to 40 years of experience in the diagnostic laboratory industry, serving in numerous sales, operations, and executive leadership positions for both laboratory service and consulting organizations. Before joining Aspira Women's Health, Palmieri was CEO/President of MOMENTUM Consulting, a national strategic life science consulting practice. She also served as CEO/President of two healthcare start-ups that resulted in a successful exit for one and won her recognition as one of the “Top 10 US Entrepreneurs of Springboard Enterprises” for the other. She spent six years as National Vice President of Anatomic Pathology Operations with LabCorp, the successor company to DIANON Systems where she served as Senior Vice President of Operations and was a key leader in the sale of DIANON to LabCorp in 2003.

She currently serves on the Life Science Council and the Women’s Health Innovation Council at Springboard Enterprises, a non-profit focused on accelerating the growth of female led entrepreneurial companies.  Ms. Palmieri holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Medical Technology from Western Connecticut State University.

James T. LaFrance

 Lead Independent Director and Audit Committee Chair

James T. LaFrance became a director of Aspira Women's Health and was elected Chairman of the Board in December 2013. He served as President and Chief Executive Officer from April to December 2014. He has over thirty years of diagnostic industry experience. Most recently, LaFrance was head of digital pathology and CEO of Omnyx, LLC for GE Healthcare. Prior to that, he held a series of commercial, strategic marketing and business development leadership roles at Ventana Medical Systems (now Roche Tissue Diagnostics), including general manager of their North American and International commercial organizations. Prior to Ventana, LaFrance served in leadership roles in global marketing and business development at Bayer Diagnostics. Jim currently serves on the board of HTG Molecular in Tucson and Personal Genome Diagnostics in Baltimore. Jim is also on the Advisory Board of PathAi in Boston. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from the University of Connecticut and an MBA from the University of Notre Dame.

Veronica G. H. Jordan, Ph.D.

Director

Dr. Veronica G. H. Jordan became a director of Aspira Women's Health in December 2014. She currently serves as an advisor to companies developing novel healthcare products and services. Previously, from 2001-2006, she was President and CEO of Medelle Corporation, a medical device company in women’s health. Prior to that, Dr. Jordan served for fourteen years in various executive positions at PAREXEL International Corporation. Earlier, she held business leadership roles at Biogen and managed an R&D department for Baxter International. Dr. Jordan currently serves on the board of Albany Molecular Research Inc. as well as a number of not-for-profit organizations working to advance healthcare initiatives. She earned a B.Sc. in biochemistry from Cambridge University and a Ph.D. in biochemistry/cell biology from Oxford University.

Celeste Fralick

Director

Dr. Celeste Fralick joined the board of Aspira Women's Health in March 2022. She is a senior technical leader with over four decades of industry experience (McAfee, Intel, Medtronic, Fairchild, and Texas Instruments). Her process, product, and system expertise spans statistics, ML, DL, and AI in innovation, development, and implementation in 10 different markets. She was named to Forbes “Top 50 Women in Technology” (2018) and CDO’s “Global Data Power Women” (2020, 2021), and has numerous patents, scholarly and media articles. She represents shareholders and industry on four different Boards and is Managing Partner, Purkinje Science and Technology, LLC. Dr. Fralick has a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Arizona State University, concentrating in neural networks, bioelectricity, and neuroscience.