BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – November 17, 2015 – Southern Research announced today that Daniel O. Hayden has been appointed to its board of directors, effective November 10, 2015. Hayden brings almost 40 years of expertise in the biotechnology-pharmaceutical industry and joins a prestigious group of leaders in the business, financial, medical, and academic sectors on the SR Board. His involvement with both for-profit and non-profit entities complements Southern Research’s portfolio of both government and commercial clients.
In his extensive career he has grown an international business, cultivated several commercial-based businesses, and developed tremendous operational knowledge. In 2011, he retired as senior vice president and general manager of the Pharmaceuticals Division from the Genzyme Corporation, now a Sanofi Company. He then transitioned into the nonprofit world with more than five years’ experience as a management advisor, interim executive director, and board member at FightSMA. Hayden is currently an independent management consultant specializing in the commercialization of branded and generic pharmaceutical drugs, custom manufacturing including small molecules, CNS drug delivery technologies, and specialty pharma-chemical materials.
Notably, Hayden is the first Southern Research board member to reside outside of Alabama in several decades. In the organization’s early 75 years of history, the board and advisory council maintained a more national composition, with members including inventor Charles F. Kettering, General Motors magnate Alfred P. Sloan, and IBM leader and visionary Thomas J. Watson.
Southern Research presently has robust capabilities at the board level across key industries. More recently, the strategy has been to add subject matter experts in each of the industries that the organization serves: drug discovery, drug development, engineering, and energy and environment. In 2014, the board elected subject matter experts from both the defense and the energy sectors, with Hayden’s recent appointment representing the drug development sector.
“As we drive more commercial business in the life sciences sector, and as we look to license drug candidates from our robust drug discovery pipeline, Dan brings a high level of expertise that will help these endeavors,” said Arthur J. Tipton, Ph.D., president and CEO, Southern Research. “I have known Dan for over 10 years and developed a strong respect for him in many areas, particularly in his strategic vision and broad sales-based approach to business opportunities. I look forward to those skills helping at Southern Research.”
“Dan brings a unique and valuable perspective to Southern Research and to our board,” said Ray L. Watts, M.D., board chair and president of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “His combined experience in major leadership roles in both the pharmaceutical industry and non-profit organizations is a good fit for Southern Research, which is working on solutions for major real world problems in the life sciences/medicine, energy and engineering industries.”
