Recro Pharma has announced key appointments to its management team and board of directors. Recro named James Miller to its board of directors. Additionally, the company appointed Ryan D. Lake, who possesses more than 20 years of senior financial and life sciences experience, as chief financial officer (CFO), in late 2020. In late 2020, David Enloe was appointed chief executive officer (CEO).
“These latest appointments are key milestones for Recro not only in terms of the quality of individuals they involve but also for what they represent in terms of the company’s laser focus on building the right team for leading Recro to success in the fast-growing CDMO space,” said Enloe. “While Recro has a long and successful track record of solving complex drug formulation, delivery and manufacturing challenges for oral, solid dose drug products, the company has traditionally been an organization largely focused on its own product pipeline. We believe that the recent enhancements to the company’s management and board, including the appointments of Jim and Ryan, further position Recro with the right leadership team to maximize the company’s shift to an externally facing organization, and to transition its world-class end-to-end CDMO expertise and capabilities into a rapidly growing business.”
Miller is an advisor on drug manufacturing strategy and a pre-eminent authority on the biopharmaceutical CDMO industry. He is founder and former president of PharmSource, the CDMO industry’s principal source of market intelligence, which was sold to Global Data, a London-based, publicly-traded provider of market intelligence services in 2016. Throughout his career, Miller has advised most major CDMOs on business strategy, major capital investment decisions and acquisitions, and served on due diligence teams for high profile acquisitions made by private equity firms. Most recently, he has served on the advisory boards of Ajinomoto Biopharma Services, a leading CDMO with large and small molecule manufacturing operations around the world, and C-Squared Pharma, a Luxembourg-based generic active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) supplier. In 2017 and 2019, he was named one of the 100 most influential people in the pharmaceutical industry by Medicine Maker magazine. Miller was previously a consultant in corporate strategy at the Boston Consulting Group and an economist at The World Bank. He holds an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Subscribe to our e-Newsletters
Stay up to date with the latest news, articles, and events. Plus, get special offers
from Pharmaceutical Outsourcing – all delivered right to your inbox! Sign up now!
“I am pleased to join the Recro board of directors at a point in time when the company is positioning itself for significant business growth. I believe that Recro’s expertise in solving formulation, delivery and manufacturing challenges for complex solid oral dose drugs will allow the company to establish itself as a partner-of-choice for developers of these sophisticated small molecule therapeutics,” said Miller. “I am particularly impressed by the way Recro offers its combination of complete end-to-end, bench-to-commercialization offerings and deep proprietary formulation and delivery knowledge to clients in a high-touch, boutique customer service model. With small molecules continuing to account for more than 50% of the rapidly expanding CDMO market, Recro has an excellent opportunity to translate its expertise and capabilities into meaningful business growth over both the near and long-term.”
Upon his appointment as CEO in late 2020, Enloe selected Mr. Lake to serve as dedicated CFO of Recro. Lake has been part of the legacy Recro Pharma leadership team, joining in 2017 as senior vice president of finance and chief accounting officer and being promoted to CFO in 2018. He played an instrumental role in the spin-off of the therapeutic pipeline development arm of Recro into Baudax Bio in November 2019. Prior to joining Recro, Lake served as CFO and vice president of finance of Aspire Bariatrics, Inc., a privately-held, commercial-stage, medical device company. From 2012 to 2015, Lake held executive management and senior finance positions, including director of the natural materials division, controller and senior director of finance, at DSM Biomedical (successor to Kensey Nash after its acquisition in 2012), a division of Royal DSM (listed on Euronext Amsterdam), a global science-based company active in health, nutrition and materials. From 2002 to 2012, Lake held various senior financial positions of increasing responsibility, most notably senior director of finance and interim CFO, with Kensey Nash Corporation, a medical device company. Earlier in his career, Lake worked at Deloitte & Touche. He is a certified public accountant, chartered global management accountant and holds a B.S. degree in accounting from West Chester University of Pennsylvania.