Imprimis Pharmaceuticals has reported the expansion of its leadership team with the appointments of Clayton Edwards as Senior Vice President of Operations, Eric Rice as Vice President of Client Relations, Pramod Sharma, PhD as Vice President of Quality, and Sanjay Samudre as Director of Manufacturing.
Mark L. Baum, CEO, stated, "I am pleased we have been able to attract these four strong executives to our senior management team during this pivotal stage in our plan for growth. Clayton, Eric, Pramod, and Sanjay are all veteran industry leaders, each with a record of excellence and accomplishment in driving growth and operational improvements for a range of successful pharmaceutical and healthcare companies. With the addition of these leaders who believe in the Imprimis mission, vision and values, we will have greater operational harmony as we safely increase production, dispense more efficiently and provide our valued customers with an exceptional experience."
As Senior Vice President of Operations, Clayton Edwards will oversee all pharmacy operations, including production, dispensing and customer service. Edwards is a healthcare executive with over 30 years of experience developing and operationalizing complex healthcare products and services. Prior to joining Imprimis, he was the Senior Vice President of Home Delivery Pharmacy and Prior Authorization for OptumRx, a UnitedHealthcare company, where he led an $18 billion P&L business segment, developing and improving traditional, specialty and compounding pharmacy, prior authorization, financial infrastructure, enterprise-wide information technology and robotic systems, and productivity improvement measures. At OptumRx, Edwards grew the mail order pharmacy business to over 32 million prescriptions annually with six-sigma dispensing accuracy, directing a global staff of over 5,500 employees in pharmacy operations, prior authorization and appeals. Edwards also led the development of a compounding formulary and network strategy for member pharmacies. Earlier in his career, Edwards held various executive level positions at Doctor Diabetic Pharmacy/Sanare, Liberty Medical and Medco Health Solutions. He actively serves on the Albany College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences Dean's Advisory Counsel, where he graduated with his Pharmacy degree. He also has a Master's degree in Business Administration from St. Joseph's University.
Eric Rice brings over 20 years of experience managing customer contact centers of varying sizes. As Vice President of Client Relations, he assumes responsibility for implementing new processes to improve efficiencies with the ultimate goal of building Imprimis' customer service department into a center of excellence. Rice previously served as Vice-President of Philidor Rx Services, where he was responsible for the oversight of its call center operations. In his two years in that role he oversaw department growth from 60 to 600+ professionals and built a center of excellence that supported a tenfold dispensing volume growth. Previously, he served as Director, Strategy and Operation for Comcast Business Class. Before joining Comcast, Rice received his start in contact centers during his 20-year career with Prudential. Across that span, he held a variety of call center related positions, culminating with oversight of 20 call center departments across multiple locations.
Pramod Sharma, Vice President of Quality, has more than 15 years of quality assurance and quality control leadership skills, as well as laboratory management experience. He will oversee all Imprimis quality programs. Included in these responsibilities are continuing to expand all Imprimis quality systems in line with the highest pharmaceutical and compounding industry standards. Prior to joining Imprimis, Sharma was the Senior Director of Research and Development Quality at Alvogen where he oversaw the quality production of sterile and non-sterile injectable, oral, topical, transdermal, and transmucosal drugs. He also served as the Senior Director of Quality at Albany Molecular Research; and during 7 years at Akorn Inc., including as the Executive Director, Quality Compliance, he ensured successful adherence to cGMP requirements in multiple facilities, contributed to several successful NDA, ANDA and ANADA FDA submissions and represented Akorn in many FDA inspections of aseptic production processes. Sharma received his Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Oklahoma and performed postdoctoral research atStanford University and Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Sanjay Samudre, Imprimis' new Director of Manufacturing, has over two decades of pharmaceutical supply chain production management and operations experience. He will oversee supply chain and production while adding automation and scalability to many of the company's core compounded formulations. Prior to joining Imprimis, Samudre served as Director of Operations at Teligent Pharma (formerly IGI Labs) where he provided leadership in functional pharmaceutical areas including manufacturing, packaging, engineering, process improvements and supply chain. He previously served as Plant Manager of Mediatech Inc., a division of Corning Life Sciences and as Production Manager at Qualitest Pharmaceuticals Inc., a subsidiary of Endo Health Solutions. Samudre also worked for Ciba Vision, the eye care unit of Novartis AG, as Production Manager to oversee manufacturing, filling and packaging operations. He has also held various positions with leading pharmaceutical companies Patheon, Apotex and Johnson and Johnson across Canada and India. Samudre received a Degree in Pharmacy from the University of Pune India in 1994.