Management Team

Dave grew up in Toronto and while he was still young his father suffered a life-changing spinal cord injury. Growing up with disabled parent, Dave understood first-hand the promise of medical research and innovation. This drove him to scientific study and research and he attended The University of Toronto obtaining a biochemistry specialist, while working part-time in the surgical neuromonitoring team at Sunnybrook Hospital. Later, during his time as a researcher at The Tanz Centre for Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases, Dave began to appreciate the challenges Canadian scientists faced in bringing therapies to market and the importance of the patent system.

Dave attended Queen’s University Law School and specialized in intellectual property going on to work at one of Canada’s leading intellectual property firms, focused on pharmaceutical patent litigation. In 2011, Dave joined Novo Nordisk Canada where he quickly rose to the Executive Team, joining as its youngest member in 2015. In his role as Vice President of Corporate Affairs, he concurrently led multiple key teams in the areas of public and government affairs, quality assurance, law, communications, product safety, customer care, business ethics, sustainability and risk.

In 2018, while interim head of Regulatory Affairs, Dave managed the first approval for semaglutide in Canada (Ozempic) and subsequently worked to bring the therapy to millions of Canadians, helping to develop Canada as the second largest market for semaglutide in the world. In 2021, Dave led efforts by Novo Nordisk in establishing the $40M Novo Nordisk Network for Healthy Populations on the 100th anniversary of the discovery of insulin in Toronto, Canada. The Network, a collaboration with the University of Toronto, brings together interdisciplinary experts committed to reducing inequities, risk, and the burden of disease for those living with diabetes and obesity.

For Dave, co-founding Vimy Pharma is the next step in a lifelong passion. Honouring the outsized impact of Canadian researchers like Banting, Best, Collip and Drucker and their work in discovering therapies such as insulin, for diabetes, and GLP-1 for diabetes and obesity, Dave is committed to leading Vimy Pharma – a company anchored in Canada for Canadians helping to bring high-quality affordable medicines to those who need them most.