Management Team


Ben Pless
President and Chief Executive Officer

Ben Pless has over 25 years of experience developing and bringing to market implantable medical devices. Most recently he was the chief operating officer and chief technical officer of NeuroPace, a privately-held company developing electronic implantable devices for the treatment of neurological disorders, such as epilepsy. Prior to joining NeuroPace in 2000, he was responsible for worldwide development activities for the Cardiac Rhythm Management Division of St. Jude Medical, Inc. Mr. Pless previously served as vice president of product development for Ventritex, Inc. and general manager of its Maven Capacitors division until the sale of the company to St. Jude Medical in 1997. He was a founder of Ventritex where he was instrumental in the development of one of the first implantable cardiac defibrillators. His career began at Intermedics, where he was a development engineer for implantable pacemakers. Mr. Pless is a member of the board of directors of several start-up medical device companies and regularly provides consulting services to the venture capital community. Mr. Pless received a B.S.E.E. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and attended graduate school at Rice University. He is a named inventor on approximately 100 patents and patent applications.

 

 

Mike Hardage

VP, Clinical Affairs

 

Mike Hardage has worked in the implantable medical device industry over the past 25 years in design, clinical engineering and research.  For the past 14 years he was at St Jude Medical Inc., Cardiac Rhythm Management division where he was Vice President of Field Clinical Engineering and most recently as Vice President Clinical Research Operations.  Prior to the acquisition of Ventritex, Inc, by St Jude Medical, Inc., Mike was Director of Field Clinical Engineering at Ventritex.  Prior to Ventritex, Mike was a co-founder, board member and Vice President, Engineering, at Medfusion Systems which was acquired by Medex Inc.  Mike's initial experience in the implantable device industry was at Intermedics where he was Director, Clinical Engineering.  His career started at Digisonics, a medical device startup.  Mr. Hardage received B.S. and Masters Degrees in Electrical Engineering at Rice University.  He has authored numerous abstracts, manuscripts and book chapters and has medical device patent/patent applications.

 

 

Lance Boling
Director, Mechanical Design & Operations

 

Mr. Boling has thirty years of development, manufacturing, and project management experience in various high-reliability industry sectors such as Defense, Super Computing, and Medical Electronics. In the last fifteen years Mr. Boling has focused his expertise into the development and manufacturing of implantable medical devices in both the cardiac rhythm management markets as well as the neuro-stimulation markets. He drove PCA manufacturing for all new implantable products at Ventritex (pioneers in the cardiac defibrillator industry). Mr. Boling developed and installed a proprietary electrolytic capacitor forming factory as well as developed new generations of cardiac defibrillators while he was affiliated with St. Jude Medical. While at NeuroPace Inc., Mr. Boling focused on developing an implanted stimulator and family of leads for the NeuroPace stimulator that is currently used to treat epilepsy as well as other movement disorders. Just prior to joining Autonomic Technologies, Mr. Boling worked at Nevro Corporation, an early start-up where he developed novel implantable spinal lead systems.  Mr. Boling has a BA in Business Management from University of Phoenix as well as Post Graduate studies in Manufacturing Engineering at Stanford University.