Fresh off retiring from a career spent principally as a pharmaceutical executive and entrepreneur, Chris is refocusing his nonprofessional energies on philanthropy. In particular, his efforts here to help eradicate hunger and food insecurity on behalf of the Jacobs & Cushman San Diego Food Bank resonate not only with his core values to relieve human suffering but also his enthusiastic passion for cooking.
An internationally recognized neuroscientist, author, and inventor, Chris spent a professional life investigating diseases of the nervous system and developing novel therapies to treat them. Following his appointment as a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center, he joined Johnson & Johnson, where over the next twenty years he held several leadership positions, including Global Head of Pain Discovery and Vice President of Neuroscience in their pharmaceutical sector as well as Head of Innovation Strategy for their consumer business. During this time, he also served as design team co-chair for the National Institute of Health’s HEAL Initiative, a PPP that has already provided nearly $4B in funding for research aimed at developing new non-opioid analgesics and substance use disorder treatments. Most recently, Chris was Co-Founder and President of Doloromics, a California biotech startup specifically engineered to discover innovative drugs and biologics to treat chronic pain.
Born and raised in Northern California, Chris earned his B.S. in Physiology from the University of California, Davis, and his Ph.D. in Pharmacology from Georgetown University, where he met his wife Lauren of 37 years, with whom he shares two children, three grandchildren, and a love of animals.