Yale School of Management - Alumni Leaders

"My greatest surprise at Yale SOM was how much I enjoyed my time there and thrived in its diverse and practical leaning environment. In my career, I have called on my SOM skills and experiences almost daily to inform my choices in leading for-profit medical products businesses and managing and working with – and learning from – highly intelligent and accomplished scientists, clinicians and regulatory experts in industry, academia, and the public sector as we seek to enhance the effectiveness and safety of medical care through improved technology."

Walter C. Ogier is president, CEO, and a business founder of Acetylon Pharmaceuticals, Inc., which is targeting new pharmaceutical treatments for multiple myeloma (a prevalent form of blood cancer), rheumatoid arthritis and a broad range of other diseases based on lead drug candidates and a powerful drug discovery platform developed by Harvard University and its affiliate the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Acetylon is funded by a group of private investors and including the Kraft Group, owners of the New England Patriots football team. Among scientific founders and contributors are Kenneth Anderson, MD of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, who has been the principal investigator of pivotal clinical registration trials of the leading drugs authorized by FDA for the treatment of multiple myeloma over the past decade, including Cellgene’s Revlimid which is an improved analog of the drug thalidomide, and Stuart Schreiber, PhD of Harvard University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute who has been a founder and technology licensor to a number of successful pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies including Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Ariad, and Infinity Pharmaceuticals.

Mr. Ogier was previously president and CEO of Arbios Systems, a public company focused on acute liver failure, and of Genetix Pharmaceuticals, a venture capital-backed company pioneering potential stem cell gene therapy cures for the world’s most prevalent severe human genetic diseases including sickle cell disease and thalassemia major. A French patient treated in a Phase I clinical trial of Genetix’ LentiGlobin gene therapy has recently achieved blood transfusion independence for more than a year, suggesting the possibility of a cure of his disease. Ogier was previously president and CEO of Eligix, Inc., a venture capital-backed adult stem cell therapy company developing monoclonal antibody-based therapeutics, which was acquired in 2001 by BioTransplant in a deal valued at $75M, and before that vice president of marketing for Aastrom Biosciences, an adult stem cell therapy and tissue engineering company which went public in 1997.

Mr. Ogier spent almost a decade following business school with Baxter Healthcare Corporation, serving in product management roles with its Fenwal blood therapy division and marketing and business development roles with the new Immunotherapy division, of which he was an architect and founding member. While at Baxter, he brought to market more than a dozen new product lines which became the standard of care for the practice of bone marrow/stem cell transplantation for the treatment of blood and other cancers, which during his years with Baxter grew from 2,000 to more than 40,000 procedures per year worldwide, creating a $25M business for Baxter.

Before attending business school, he worked as a staff scientist and later an Industrial Economist at Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International). Ogier received a BA in chemistry magna cum laude from Williams College in 1979 and an MBA from the Yale School of Management in 1987, where he also received a scholarship award in marketing and teaching assistantships in competitive strategy and decision analysis.