Management

Kirsten Johnston Barker, President and Co-Founder

Kirsten Barker is the President and co-Founder of Prendismo. She has been an agent of transformative change within both large multi-national organizations and leading edge startup enterprises over the past fifteen years. Kirsten has aggressively lead the operational and tactical efforts of Prendismo as it was transformed from a ten year academic research initiative into a high growth commercial enterprise. Prior to co-founding Prendismo, Kirsten was an early member of Cornell University's eClips project team where she was heavily involved in the design, construction, database interface and IT integration of the initial product prototype.

Prior to Prendismo, Kirsten was Chief Information Officer for NSF International where she developed and implemented the organization's technology vision and strategy with the CEO and Board of Directors. In that position, Kirsten was able, in the post-internet bubble era, to support the company's revenue growth with a strategic outsourcing plan that included a reduction of 25% in the operating budget and 15% in the capital budget. During this period, Kirsten was on the forefront of the implementation of mobile device technology for enhanced field auditor productivity.

Kirsten has also served as Senior Director at the healthcare software company Solucient where she led a database integration effort which improved operational efficiency while preserving and making available historical corporate knowledge. Additionally, she held several posts as a consultant with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) including the oversight of the development of a Client Information Database for a major investment bank.

Kirsten Barker earned her B.S. from Cornell University and M.S. from Johns Hopkins University.

Tony Eisenhut, Chairman and Co-Founder

Tony is the Managing Director and co-Founder of KensaGroup. He has launched eight university-derived start-ups since KensaGroup's inception. Previously, Tony has served in both the CEO and COO capacities of mid-market manufacturing companies. He also served as Vice President of a multi-billion dollar international food retailer. Tony sits on the boards of NovaSterilis, Inc, MedHesives, Inc, Prendismo, LLC, and Novomer, Inc. Additionally, he has been an advisor to NextGen in conjunction with New York's Task Force on Economic Development and Emerging Industries and the Center for Life Science Enterprise (New York State Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research Center for Advanced Technology at Cornell).

Tony Eisenhut earned his B.S. degree from Cornell University.

Deborah Streeter, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder

Deborah Streeter is the Bruce F. Failing, Sr. Professor of Personal Enterprise and Small Business Management in the Department of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University where she has been on the faculty since 1986.

Entrepreneurship and small business management are the focus of Dr. Streeter's teaching, research, and outreach activities. As the originator of the eClips project at Cornell, Professor Streeter specializes in teaching business planning, small business management and entrepreneurial leadership (including gender and international dimensions). Her research interests include: models of entrepreneurship education, the role of entrepreneurship and small business in economic development, issues related to gender and business and entrepreneurship in agricultural settings.

Dr. Streeter received the Olympus Innovative Educator Award in 2007, Professor of Merit Award in 2002 and 2003, and was awarded the 2001 USDA National Food and Agricultural Sciences Excellence in College and University Teaching. Dr. Streeter was named a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow in 2000, the highest teaching honor at Cornell University. She also received the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2000 and the Innovative Teaching Award in 1996.

Deborah Streeter earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Wisconsin Madison. She is a member of Cornell's university-wide program in entrepreneurship, The Entrepreneurship@Cornell program.

Bruce Ganem, Chief Scientific Officer

Bruce Ganem is the Franz and Elisabeth Roessler Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology at Cornell. He holds the additional title of J. Thomas Clark Professor of Entrepreneurship at Cornell�s Johnson Graduate School of Management.

A synthetic organic chemist by training, Dr. Ganem has broad scientific research interests ranging from organic and analytical chemistry to biochemistry. He is also interested in the interface of science and business, especially in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. Dr. Ganem has founded or helped found several technology startup companies in the past fifteen years, including LeukoSite, Inc., ArQule, Natural Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Taktix, Gene Network Sciences, NovaSterilis, Medhesives, Novomer, and Amicus Therapeutics. Recognizing early on the transformative power of social networks, he was a seed-stage investor in The Globe.com in the early 1990s.

Professor Ganem has authored some 250 scientific papers as well as numerous popular articles about science and science education. His recent honors include the American Chemical Society�s 2007 Creative Invention Award as well as the EPA�s 2007 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award. In 2008 he was named a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell, an award recognizing excellence in undergraduate teaching.

Ganem received his B.A. in chemistry from Harvard College and his Ph.D in organic chemistry from Columbia University. He also held as a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford prior to joining the Cornell faculty in 1974.