2021-03-08
Dr Ina Laura Perkins new CEO of Realheart
On March 15, Dr Ina Laura Perkins will shoulder the role as CEO of Realheart, thus taking over the leadership of the Västerås company and its development of an artificial heart.
Ina Laura has two master's degrees, in biomedicine, and in innovation and entrepreneurship. In 2010, she won The Prince of Wales Innovation Scholarship for her stem cell work and received her PhD in 2015 from Swansea University Medical School. In 2019, Ina Laura completed an Executive MBA in financial management at The Stockholm School of Economics.
Ina Laura has worked with medical innovations throughout her career. Before joining Realheart in 2017, she was involved in the start-up of The Nobel Prize winner Sir Martin Evans' stem cell company Celixir and worked as Head of Research at Calon Cardio-Technology with the development of a new left-chamber assist device.
“Gaining the board's confidence to lead Realheart into the exciting times ahead is very honourable. Throughout my career, I have made a conscious decision to broaden my skills to be ready to take on a CEO role. Thanks to Azad's innovation and business abilities, it is now a fantastic company I am set to manage. My immediate focus will be to strengthen the organization with more employees so that we can keep a steady pace forward towards clinical trials ", says incoming CEO Ina Laura Perkins.
After the handover, Azad Najar will take on the role of Chief Medical and Innovation Officer and will be responsible for animal studies and the company's innovations.
“Already from being a company with few people, I have constantly worked to develop the competence in Realheart and recruit highly skilled people. Now I can look back and proudly say that we have a good organization with very competent staff. The work with preclinical animal testing is growing and requires great focus in the future. We also need to be at the forefront of innovations in heart failure treatment to achieve our vision “no one should have to die of heart failure". I therefore need to free up more time to work with these two important areas in the company. We have been planning for a long time for Ina Laura to take over the role of CEO. She will be an excellent CEO with her wise leadership, her enormous competence and her large industry network ", comments outgoing CEO Azad Najar.
This disclosure contains information that Real Heart is obliged to make public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation (EU nr 596/2014). The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact person, on 08-03-2021 15:09 CET.