Deerfield
About Deerfield

Launched in 1994, Deerfield Management Company is an investment firm dedicated to advancing healthcare through information, investment, and philanthropy—all toward the end goal of cures for disease, improved quality of life, and reduced cost of care.

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Investment

Supporting companies across the healthcare ecosystem with flexible funding models…

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Information

Delivering market research to the Deerfield team, its portfolio companies and other partners.

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Philanthropy

A New York City-based not-for-profit devoted to advancing innovative health care initiatives.

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Portfolio Companies

Deerfield generally maintains a combined portfolio of more than 150 private and public investments across the life science, medical device, diagnostic, digital health and health service industries at all stages of evolution from start-up to mature company.

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Research Collaborations

Deerfield partners with leading academic research centers, providing critical funding and expertise to further sustain and accelerate the commercialization of discoveries toward meaningful societal impact by advancing cures for disease.

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Strategic Partners

As a strategic partner, Deerfield offers capital, scientific expertise, business operating support, and unique access to innovation.

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Deerfield Foundation

The Deerfield Foundation is a New York City-based not-for-profit organization whose mission is to improve health, accelerate innovation and promote human equity.

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Cure Campus

Cure is a 12-story innovation campus in New York City that intends to bring together innovators from academia, government, industry, and the not-for-profit sectors to advance human health and accelerate the fight against disease.

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Cure Programming

Cure has a series of expert lectures intended to advance thought in healthcare, management, innovation, policy, and other relevant subjects. This fosters growth and education for those at Cure and its guests.

Events at the Cure

Break Into the Boardroom Fills Over 50 Healthcare Board Seats With Women Leaders

March 07, 2022 12:13 PM Eastern Standard Time

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Deerfield Management and Oxeon Holdings joined forces in 2016 to create “Break into the Boardroom,” a program designed to promote greater representation of female healthcare executives in corporate boardrooms. To date, the program has identified and trained more than 220 women healthcare leaders and helped place 56 of its alumni and program affiliates onto corporate boards across the healthcare sector.

“We are extremely proud of the program’s impact to date and heartened by the growing awareness that boardroom diversity is not just cosmetic or politically correct, but actually just good business,” said Leslie Henshaw, a Partner at Deerfield Management. “The success we are seeing is extremely promising, but there is still much work to be done in helping boards source candidates from beyond their existing networks.”

Women make up only about 14% of corporate board seats at publicly held life sciences companies, according to Bedford Group/TRANSEARCH. The worse news is that progress has been less tangible in the private company arena, according to a whitepaper published by Deerfield on gender disparity among venture-backed healthcare companies. Of the 236 privately held companies investigated by Deerfield Institute only 10-12% of director roles are held by women. Given the growing recognition that diverse boards perform better, these numbers need to grow. The supply of talented women executives is not the problem. Connecting them to the right demand is the hard part, and that is precisely the challenge Break into the Boardroom was founded to solve.

“Knowing whether you are ready or not for a board role can be difficult to ascertain,” said June Lee M.D., a Break into the Boardroom alumni who currently sits on the boards of CinCor Pharma, Tenaya Therapeutics and GenEdit. “Break into the Boardroom gave me and my peers the knowledge, awareness, and connections to get started.”

“Having a diverse and balanced board is essential for any business. This is especially true in healthcare, where women make 80% of the care decisions for their families,” said Vincent Bradley, CEO of Advantia Health, a Deerfield supported women’s healthcare services company. “As the CEO of a healthcare company with dozens of Ob-Gyn practices, surrounding myself with women leaders is vital to me personally and to our business. I am incredibly thankful that Break into the Boardroom connected me with a channel for finding this talent. This program and our new board member, Karen Teitelbaum, have already had an enormous impact on our company and we look forward to working together for years to come.”

The program strives, by design, to be practical, concrete, and measurable. With this in mind, Break into the Boardroom’s goal is to find qualified women, enhance their knowledge of governance fundamentals and match them over time with appropriate board roles.

About Deerfield

Deerfield is an investment management firm committed to advancing healthcare through investment, information and philanthropy. The Firm works across the healthcare ecosystem to connect people, capital, ideas and technology in bold, collaborative and inclusive ways. For more information, please visit www.deerfield.com.

About Oxeon

Oxeon Holdings is a healthcare growth services firm and is the parent company of Oxeon Partners, an invested executive search firm, Oxeon Investments Funds I & II, and Cien Ventures, an internal venture studio. Oxeon seeks to connect its healthcare company partners with the fundamental drivers of business growth—great people, transformational business partnerships, strategic investments, and next generation business ideas, as well as various advisory and other growth-related services.

For more information visit www.oxeonpartners.com

Contacts

Caroline Drucker
[email protected]
212-582-8296