Randall K Julian, Jr., Ph.D., Founder and President
Randy is President and Founder of Indigo BioSystems located in Indianapolis, Indiana. Randy earned a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from Purdue University in 1993 and then worked in Discovery Chemistry at Eli Lilly for 14 years. Randy founded Indigo based on informatics technology developed in his research group. Dr. Julian lead Indigo from its founding to profitability, building a world class management, engineering and research team to commercialize laboratory data analysis software. Dr. Julian is now leading the creation of standards-based, cloud computing informatics solutions for laboratory and health data analysis. Dr. Julian is a frequent speaker in the mass spectrometry community and has created short courses in statistics and data analysis to help improve the quality of results in research groups worldwide. Randy is the past Chairman of the Human Proteome Organization’s Proteomics Standards Initiative Steering Group where he coauthored of two international standards for analytical data. He was also the chairman of the ASTM committee on analytical data standards. Dr. Julian also maintains an active research relationship with the faculty at Purdue University where he is an Adjunct Professor of Chemistry.
Raul Zavaleta, Chief Executive Officer
Raul Zavaleta has 25 years of international experience in life sciences in various executive management roles. Prior to joining Indigo BioSystems, he was a partner at Volatus Advisors LLC, an enterprise development consulting firm for entrepreneurial companies. In this role, Mr. Zavaleta helped emerging companies with strategic visioning, business planning and capital structures. He has held various executive positions, including CEO, of national and international technology companies. Mr. Zavaleta has co-founded several companies, including SciCor, the first clinical laboratory exclusively dedicated to clinical trials, which became the foundation of Covance, one of the most successful global Contract Research Organizations.
Prior to beginning his entrepreneurial career, Mr. Zavaleta worked for Dow Chemical, American Hospital Supply, and Smith Kline Beecham Laboratories.
He received a BS, Chemical Engineering from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Sharon McIlwaine, Director of Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs
As the Director of Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs, Sharon balances Indigo BioSystem’s corporate responsibility of meeting and maintaining regulatory compliance while remaining operationally agile to meet the client’s needs. Sharon has extensive experience as a change agent within all organizational levels guiding and motivating high-performance teams to re-engineer operational and commercial processes to meet strategic initiatives.
Sharon served as the Director of Competitive Excellence at Ventana Medical Systems and the Director of Continuous Improvement at Roche Diagnostics within the Quality and Regulatory organizations of those two medical device companies. While in those roles, Sharon led site deployments of Lean Sigma for continuous improvement. Her experience also included Quality System changes to improve regulatory compliance as well as participation in FDA audits. As a Certified Six Sigma Black Belt, Sharon served as an internal consultant at the Center for Applied Systems Engineering within the Veterans Administration’s (VA) Veterans Engineering Resource Center. While there, she nationally trained and mentored select candidates on the application of Lean Six Sigma within the VA and led teams in initiatives to redesign major national processes. Sharon’s regulatory expertise includes the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria and a Certified ISO Lead Auditor. Using the criteria for the Arizona Quality Alliance, Sharon served as a Lead Judge where she led a team in the evaluation of processes for hospitals and universities across Arizona.
Sharon is a graduate from the College of Engineering at Bradley University and also received her MBA from the Executive Management program at the University of Arizona.
Tim Lancaster, Director of Software Engineering
Tim Lancaster’s 15 year career has focused on defining, designing and implementing software for the life science and medical industries. He has experience in building and leading software development teams with an emphasis on strong core architecture, user centered interaction design, and low software defects.
Prior to joining Indigo, he held positions at Beckman Coulter where he made contributions as a developer, technical lead, and as the overall software lead for several new products. Most recently he led the software development for Beckman Coulter’s next generation molecular diagnostics analyzer.
Tim received his B.S. in Computer Science from Rose-Hulman in 1997.
Bill Stewart, Director of Finance
Bill Stewart is a Certified Public Accountant and Chartered Global Management Accountant with over 25 years’ experience in finance and accounting management positions including an expatriate assignment. His background covers a diverse range of industries including public accounting, equipment manufacturing, pharmaceutical manufacturing, business services, investment banking, insurance and asset management. Before joining Indigo BioSystems, Mr. Stewart held positions as Corporate Controller for Upsher-Smith Laboratories, Vice President, Corporate Controller and Chief Financial Officer for ZonerTrader, Inc. and Vice President, Corporate Controller for Think Equity Partners LLC.
He received a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry, Juris Doctor and Masters of Professional Accountancy from the University of South Dakota and a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Minnesota.
Denise Purdie-Andrews, Director of Informatics and Customer Support
As the Manager of Scientific and Technical Support, Denise is responsible for developing people, tools, and processes to ensure that Indigo provides best in class support to its customers and internal users. She has extensive experience in fitting these pieces together and managing continuous improvement processes. She excels at collaborating with cross-functional teams to achieve excellent business outcomes.
Denise has spent her career helping start and develop entrepreneurial companies. Prior to coming to Indigo, she was a founding employee of Senex Services Corp, a leading healthcare financial services company, where she served in various management roles including Senior Vice President during her 14 years.
Denise received her B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from MIT.