Leadership Team

Daniel Dornbusch, MPH MBA

Chief Executive Officer

Daniel Dornbusch has worked in the biotechnology industry for over 20 years for large pharmaceutical, small biotechnology, and diagnostics companies in roles including business development, mergers and acquisitions, marketing, sales, commercial strategy, and product development. He most recently served as founder and CEO of Acteris, an immunoncology company located in San Francisco. Daniel previously served as Chief Commercial Officer at Nodality, a therapeutic development company focused in immunology, oncology and immunoncology. Before Acteris, Daniel worked at Novartis in business development and later assumed responsibility as the Commercial Director of the Western United States and Latin America for the Diagnostics Division. Previous to Novartis, Daniel held roles in business development at Cerimon Pharmaceuticals, led business development and sales for NMCR, an oncology strategy arm of AmerisourceBergen, and led a hematology marketing team at Genentech.

Daniel started his biotechnology career at the Genzyme Corporation and served in various roles including business development, product management, and corporate development. Daniel received his B.A. in Biology and English from Cornell University, M.S. from Tufts University School of Medicine and Emerson College, and M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School.

William Kennedy, M.D.

Senior Vice President, Clinical

Dr. Kennedy has more than 20 years of experience in biopharmaceutical clinical research & development across several therapeutic areas including infectious diseases, autoimmune disorders, neurology, and therapeutic vaccines. Prior to joining Excision, Dr. Kennedy served as Vice President, Development at Calcilytix, which is developing treatments to manage calcium homeostasis. He was Vice President, Clinical Development at Audentes Therapeutics where he was Clinical Leader in the Company’s AAV-directed gene replacement therapy for two clinical programs using AAV vectors for Crigler Najjar Syndrome and Catecholaminergic Polymorphic Ventricular Tachycardia.

Prior to that, he served as Associate Medical Director and Medical Director at Merck & Co., where he was the team leader for early clinical trials of treatments for neurological conditions, including the successful development of a first-in-class and FDA approved treatment for insomnia, suvorexant. He was a Medical Director and Senior Medical Director for more than five years at Genentech, where he was responsible for early clinical development of treatments for autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus erythematosus. Prior to that, he served as Associate Medical Director and Medical Director at Merck & Co., where he was responsible for early clinical trials of treatments to treat neurological conditions including the development of the FDA approved sedative, suvorexant.

Dr. Kennedy earned his M.D. at Stanford University School of Medicine and was a fellow and attending physician at Yale University School of Medicine focused on pediatric infectious diseases.

Jennifer Gordon, Ph.D

Senior Vice President, R&D

Jennifer Gordon, Ph.D. is Senior Vice President of Research and Development at Excision BioTherapeutics. Prior to joining Excision, Dr. Gordon spent nearly three decades in academic research, most recently as Associate Professor, Department of Neuroscience and Center for NeuroVirology, and Associate Dean for Research at Temple University School of Medicine.  Dr. Gordon has been the recipient of numerous NIH grants for her research on HIV and JC virus, as well as neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. She has published over 125 peer-reviewed research papers, review articles, book chapters, and CME monographs.  She previously served as the Managing Editor of the Journal of NeuroVirology for over 25 years, and served as a long-time Board Member and Officer of the International Society for NeuroVirology.

Dr. Gordon received a B.S. in Biology from Albright College and a Ph.D. in Pathology from MCP-Hahnemann School of Medicine. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Molecular Virology in the Department of Biology, College of Science of Technology, Temple University, before joining the faculty at Temple.

Josh Blacher

Chief Financial Officer

Sara Turken, J.D.

General Counsel

Rosa Ann Branca

Vice President, Clinical Operations

Elvin Ruan

Sr. Director, Genome Editing

Ryo Takeuchi

Sr. Director, Genome Editing