Dr. Ross Jaffe, MD Joins NEA as Venture Advisor
Prolific Medical Technology Investor and Seasoned Board Member Brings Experience to Global Venture Capital Firm and Portfolio Companies
Menlo Park, CA – February 21, 2019 – New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA), a leading global venture capital firm, today announced the appointment of Ross A. Jaffe, MD as a Venture Advisor on the firm’s healthcare investment team. Dr. Jaffe will work closely with NEA’s medical device team out of the firm’s Menlo Park office.
“We’ve had the pleasure of working with Dr. Jaffe for quite some time as a co-investor and fellow board member,” said Dr. Josh Makower, General Partner and Head of Medical Device and Healthtech investing at NEA. “Dr. Jaffe’s deep roots within the Medtech investing ecosystem and leadership role improving regulatory and reimbursement processes in the US make him an excellent partner in advancing our current projects as well as helping us identify new transformative medical device investments. We are honored to have Dr. Jaffe join us as a Venture Advisor and look forward to the value he will add to both our investment team and medical device portfolio companies.”
Dr. Jaffe is an experienced venture capitalist with expertise in medical technology. As one of the founders and a Managing Director of Versant Ventures, a healthcare-focused venture capital firm, he has spent the past twenty years investing primarily in medical devices. Prior to founding Versant Ventures, Dr. Jaffe was a General Partner at Brentwood Venture Capital, where he led investments in medical device, drug delivery, biotechnology, healthcare services, and healthcare information system companies.
Dr. Jaffe has served on the boards of multiple successful medical technology companies, including Acclarent, St. Francis Medical Technologies, Therasense, Insulet, Novacept, and Ablation Frontiers, and is currently a Director of AlterG, Minerva Surgical, and DocMatter. He earned a BA in Policy Studies from Dartmouth; an MD from Johns Hopkins; and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business; and completed his medical training and served as an attending physician at the University of California, San Francisco.
Dr. Jaffe has played an active role in the venture capital and medical device communities, including serving as a Director of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists. He currently serves as a Director of the Medical Device Innovation Consortium (MDIC), an FDA-industry collaboration focused on improving regulatory science. Dr. Jaffe was honored with the NVCA Outstanding Service Award in 2017, and has been recognized on the Forbes Midas List of top venture capitalists in 2008, 2011, and 2012. Outside the venture community, Dr. Jaffe is a current member and former Chair of the Board of Advisors of the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, and a former Chair of the Board of the Children's Health Council.
About NEA
New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) is a global venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses across multiple stages, sectors and geographies. With more than $20 billion in cumulative committed capital since the firm’s first fund closed in 1978, NEA invests in technology and healthcare companies at all stages in a company’s lifecycle, from seed stage through IPO. The firm's long track record of successful investing includes more than 225 portfolio company IPOs and more than 375 acquisitions. www.nea.com.
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Contact:
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Ashley Mitchell
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