George Ayoub

  2. George Ayoub
  3. Leadership Board

Leadership Board



Sultana Afdhal


CEO, World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH)


Sultana Afdhal is the Chief Executive Officer of the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH). An initiative of the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development - WISH’s vision is to bring about a healthier world through global collaboration and serves as a platform for health leaders and innovators from around the world. Within Qatar, Sultana has put significant effort into the creation and implementation of innovative learning programs for children with autism and special needs. In 2019, Sultana was made an honorary nurse and awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal, the highest international accolade a nurse can achieve, in recognition for her work in championing the work of nurses and midwives around the world. Sultana sits on the Boards of both the World Health Organization’s State of the World Nursing Committee, and the State of the World Midwifery Report. Sultana was recently appointed as Board Member of the Renard Academy, a school that provides specialized services for children with autism. She also sits on the Editorial Board of the BMJ Innovation Journal, as well as the Carter Center’s Journalism Fellowship Advisory Board. Successfully overseeing two WISH global summits, Sultana has been instrumental in creating fruitful new partnerships with a diverse range of organizations that have an interest in the health and wellbeing of societies. Away from the office, Sultana has a master’s degree in English Literature from Oxford and is a published author. Combining her passion for literacy and global health, dedicated the proceeds of her first book to the Fight for Sight charity.






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George Ayoub


CEO, QWIXEL Therapeutics


George received his B.S. in biochemistry from UCLA and received his M.B.A. from Pepperdine University. He co-founded and previously served as Chief Executive Officer and President of One Lambda, Inc., a transplant diagnostic company since 1984. In 2012, One Lambda was purchased by Thermo Fisher Scientific.

He spent ten years in the UCLA Tissue Typing Laboratory, where his studies focused on improving and developing methodology for Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) typing. While at UCLA, Ayoub authored and co-authored over 20 publications in the field of HLA research. His techniques described in these publications continue to be used to date in laboratories performing HLA typing for transplantation.

He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Southern California Biomedical Council, a member on the UCLA TDG oversight committee, CEO of QWIXEL Therapeutics, a 2016 startup company with the focus on cancer treatment and a Board member of Nammi Therapeutics with focus on cancer treatment. George was the past Chairman of the UCLA Life Science Centennial Campaign Board.

George is also involved in various philanthropic projects. He continues to mentor startup companies in the medical field of diagnostics and therapeutics area. He received the prestigious Entrepreneur of the Year award from Ernst & Young in 2005, and he was also awarded the 2013 Maronite Civic Service and Lifetime Achievement award.



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Alexander Goldberg


General Partner, AdAstral Funds


As a serial entrepreneur & technology investor for more than two decades, Alex has deep domain expertise in enterprise software, artificial intelligence, and a wide range of emerging technologies. He spent the earlier part of his career working in strategic product management and business development roles at two of the earliest Unicorn tech startups that spawned from MIT, followed by a role working for one of the top executives at a Fortune 500 company, serving in the Office of the CTO. Subsequently, as an investor-operator, Alex has acquired & operated several technology-based businesses as CEO or Executive Chairman.

Alex has had a commitment to social impact, throughout his career, via both his investing activities, and leadership across many philanthropic projects. His venture capital investments in cellphone technologies were among the earliest to target Financial Inclusion in the developing world. And his philanthropic work with Boston-based Social Venture Partners, in its inaugural year, led to a unique partnership between Boston-area executives and a major Food & Environment nonprofit.

Alex is an active member of the New York Angels, a regular mentor to more than a dozen startup incubators in NYC, and is frequently a speaker & panelist at a range of industry events.

He has served on the Advisory Board at the Nantucket Conference, the founding board of the World Frontiers Forum, and is a longtime active participant in the TED Conference community. Alex has an MBA from Columbia Business School and studied finance in Mumbai, Buenos Aires, London and New York.


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Stephen Ibaraki


Chair & General Partner, Redds Capital
Founder UNITU AI for Good Global Summit


Serial entrepreneur, investor, and futurist, Stephen’s accomplishments and global leadership positions are too numerous to list. His leadership with some of the world’s leading scientific, technical and financial organizations allow him a unique vantage point to oversee where innovation is heading in the coming years. Stephen is the visionary behind REDDS whose tireless work has positioned REDDS to take advantage of the superior intelligence received by the group. As a small sampling representing under 5% of Stephen’s current activities, he is the:

• Founder chair outreach UN ITU AI for good global summit, adopted by governments, corporations, and academia, as the largest UN ITU innovation impact movement and summit driving AI business solutions across 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals;

• Founder of Fintech Ideas Festival, Technology Advisory Council, providing industry solutions ten years into the future for CEOs representing US $92.7 Trillion in managed assets;

• Founder YPO EU Impact Summit Advisory Board, creating workable business solutions for the world’s largest opportunities/challenges. YPO: 29K CEOs, US $9 Trillion annual revenue across 130 countries. With work underway since May 2019, the first summit will be Oct 2020 and will go public;
• Recipient of 18 Microsoft Global Awards (15 MVP Awards), 2018-2021 in AI, recognizing decades of lifetime achievement, global leadership, entrepreneurship, investments, disruptive innovation; and

• Contributor to Forbes / Cognitive World and IT World Canada on leading new investments, innovation, entrepreneurship.


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Frank Litvack


CEO, Vida FLaSh Acquisitions


Frank is a co-founder of Pura Vida Investments and serves as Member, Director of Designated Investments. Frank has an extensive background in healthcare ranging from clinical practice and research to founding and operating companies. He currently serves as CEO of Vida FLaSH Acquisitions, Inc., a life sciences SPAC as well as co-managing member of FLaSH Investments LLC, the SPAC sponsor. He is Executive Chairman of Capricor, Inc., a publicly traded biotechnology firm developing novel therapeutics for treatment of heart failure, and a General Partner of Reprise Technologies, LLC, a medical device incubator. In addition he serves as a Director or Chairman of several privately held companies including V-Wave Ltd, a clinical stage medical device company focused on the treatment of heart failure, Credence Medsystems, a medical device company, and Levation Pharma Ltd, a facial aesthetics company. Until 2020, he served both on the Board of MedAvail Technologies, Inc, a healthcare technology company which became publicly traded on the NASDAQ, and as Director of Trialtech Medical, a software and services company which was sold to Scarrett Sciences. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of Recor Medical Inc, a medical device company in the field of renal denervation that was sold to Otsuka Pharmaceuticals in 2018. Frank served as Chairman & CEO of Conor Medsystems, a drug-eluting stent company that was sold to Johnson & Johnson for $1.4 billion in 2007. He was Chairman of Savacor, a maker of implantable remote pressure monitoring devices that was sold to St. Jude in 2005. Frank was Co-Founder and Chairman of Progressive Angioplasty, the developer of the stent delivery system for the Palmaz-Schatz stent marketed by Johnson & Johnson. The company was sold to US Surgical, which eventually was acquired by Covidien. Frank was a Director of One Lambda Inc., a leader in transplant diagnostics that was sold to Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., in 2012 for $925 million. He was Co-Founder and Director of Advanced Interventional Systems Inc until its merger with The Spectranetics Corporation in 1993.

From 1986 until 2000, Frank was Co-Director of Cardiovascular Intervention at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles. He attained the rank of Full Professor of Medicine at UCLA and Board Certification in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Diseases, and Interventional Cardiology. He has authored over 100 research articles and chapters on various areas of cardiology. Frank received his undergraduate and medical degrees from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He resides and operates out of Los Angeles, CA.

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