Board of Directors

Joshua N. Silverman is currently the Co-Founder and Managing Member of Parkfield Funding LLC and is a former Principal and Managing Partner of Iroquois Capital Management, LLC. Mr. Silverman served as Co-Chief Investment Officer of Iroquois from 2003 until July 2016. From 2000 to 2003, Mr. Silverman served as Co-Chief Investment Officer of Vertical Ventures, LLC, a merchant bank. Prior to forming Iroquois, Mr. Silverman was a Director of Joele Frank, a boutique consulting firm specializing in mergers and acquisitions. Previously, Mr. Silverman served as Assistant Press Secretary to The President of The United States. Mr. Silverman currently serves on the boards of directors of Ayro Inc., MYMD Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Petros Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Synaptogenix, Inc. Mr. Silverman received his B.A. from Lehigh University.

Dr. Abecassis is a renowned transplantation surgeon at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine who has demonstrated outstanding leadership qualities in academia, in the clinic and throughout his career in medicine – a career that spans over 30 years. Dr. Abecassis is the Director of the Comprehensive Transplant Center of the Feinberg School of Medicine.  He is also the Chief of Transplant Surgery in the Department of Surgery at Feinberg and a James Roscoe Miller Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Feinberg.

Dr. Abecassis received his MD degree from the University of Toronto in 1983 and was awarded an MBA degree from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in 2000. After his postgraduate tenure in Toronto, Dr. Abecassis began his clinical career as Assistant Professor of Surgery and Director of Liver Transplantation and Hepatobiliary Surgery at the University of Iowa. Dr. Abecassis was recruited by Northwestern University in 1993 to become its Director of Liver Transplantation. There he initiated Northwestern’s liver transplant program. In 2004, Dr. Abecassis was named Chief of the Division of Transplantation at the Feinberg School of Medicine. He became Founding Director of the Comprehensive Transplant Center at Northwestern in 2009 and was appointed Dean for Clinical Affairs at the Feinberg School of Medicine in 2008, serving until 2011.

Dr. Abecassis has received continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the past 15 years. He is the principal investigator in research that includes both laboratory and clinical studies. He is also the principal investigator of the clinical core of the NIH Genomics of Transplantation Cooperative Research Program. Dr. Abecassis has trained numerous clinical and research fellows.

Dr. Abecassis is a member of many national and international professional societies, including the Society of University Surgeons and the American Surgical Association and was President of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons 2010-2011. He has served and continues to serve on the Editorial Boards of major scientific journals (Hepatology, Surgery, Transplantation and Liver Transplantation) and is a reviewer for all major journals related to surgery and transplantation. He has served as a member of NIH grant study sections and special emphasis panels relating to both transplantation and virology.  He is a permanent member of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) study section for career development and training grants.

Dr. Abecassis has been a course director for the American Society of Transplant Surgeons Leadership Development Program since 2010 and was course director for the Advanced Leader Development Program in 2013 at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. He was a voting member of the Medicare Coverage Advisory Committee and served on the United HealthCare Group Physician Advisory Board on Healthcare Performance and Quality. Dr. Abecassis has been a member of various local, regional and national regulatory committees and has published seminal papers on both the regulatory and financial aspects of transplantation, including the Healthcare Reform and the Affordable Care Act.

Robert Weinstein has served as a director of the Company since November 2022. Mr. Weinstein has served as chief financial officer of Synaptogenix, Inc. (Nasdaq: SNPX since October 2013. In addition, Mr. Weinstein performs work as a consultant for Petros Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: PTPI). He has extensive accounting and finance experience, spanning more than 30 years, as a public accountant, investment banker, healthcare private equity fund principal and chief financial officer. From September 2011 to the present, Mr. Weinstein has also been an independent consultant for several healthcare companies in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. From March 2010 to August 2011, he was the chief financial officer of Green Energy Management Services Holdings, Inc., an energy consulting company. From August 2007 to February 2010, Mr. Weinstein served as chief financial officer of Xcorporeal, Inc., a development-stage medical device company which was sold in March 2010 to Fresenius Medical USA, a leading provider of dialysis equipment and services worldwide. Mr. Weinstein also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of XWELL, Inc. (formerly XpresSpa Group, Inc.) (Nasdaq: XWEL), a health and wellness company whose core assets, XpresSpa and XpresCheck®, is a leading airport retailer of spa services and related health and wellness products and Oblong, Inc. which provides multi-stream collaboration technologies and managed services for video collaboration and network applications in the United States and internationally. Mr. Weinstein received his MBA degree in finance and international business from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, is a Certified Public Accountant (inactive), and received his BS degree in accounting from the State University of New York at Albany. Mr. Weinstein was chosen as a director of the Company because of his public company and financial expertise.

Wayne R. Walker has served as a director of the Company since December 2022. Mr. Walker has over 35 years of experience in corporate governance, turnaround management, corporate restructuring and bankruptcy matters. In 1998, Mr. Walker founded Walker Nell Partners, Inc., an international business consulting firm, and has served as its president from its founding to the present. Before founding Walker Nell Partners, Inc., Mr. Walker worked for 15 years at the DuPont Company in Wilmington, Delaware in the Securities and Bankruptcy group, where he worked in the Corporate Secretary’s office and served as Senior Counsel. From 2022 to present, Mr. Walker has served as a director of AMMO, Inc. (Nasdaq: POWW), a designer, producer, and marketer of ammunition products. From December 2020 to the present, Mr. Walker has served as a director of AYRO, Inc. (Nasdaq: AYRO), a designer and manufacturer of compact, sustainable electric vehicles. From 2018 to the present, Mr. Walker has served as a director of Wrap Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: WRAP), an innovator of modern policing solutions, where he also serves as chairman of the board. From 2018 to the present, Mr. Walker has served as a director of Pitcairn Company and as the Chair of its Compensation Committee. From 2013 to 2014, Mr. Walker served as chairman of the board of directors of BridgeStreet Worldwide, Inc., a global provider of extended corporate housing. From 2016 to 2018, Mr. Walker served as chairman of the board of directors of Last Call Operating Companies, an owner of various national restaurants. From 2013 to 2020, Mr. Walker served as chairman of the board of trustees of National Philanthropic Trust, a public charity. From 2018 to 2020, Mr. Walker served as Vice President of the Board of Education of the City of Philadelphia. From 2020 to the present, Mr. Walker has served as a director of Petros Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: PTPI), which focuses on men’s health. Mr. Walker has also served on the board of directors for numerous other companies and foundations including Seaborne Airlines, Inc., Green Flash Brewery, Inc., and Eagleville Hospital and Foundation. Mr. Walker has a J.D. from Catholic University (Washington, DC) and a Bachelor of Arts from Loyola University (New Orleans). He is an attorney licensed by the State Bar of Georgia. He is a member of the State Bar Association of Georgia, American Bar Association, American Bankruptcy Institute and Turnaround Management Association. Mr. Walker was chosen as a director of the Company because of his extensive board experience.

Jonathan L. Schechter is an experienced public company director with expertise in capital allocation and mergers and acquisitions having worked with public companies for over two decades, including ten years of legal experience and fourteen years of investment banking experience. He is currently a partner of The Special Equities Group, a division of Dawson James Securities, Inc., a full-service investment bank specializing in healthcare, biotechnology, technology and clean-tech sectors. Mr. Schechter is one of the founding partners of The Special Equities Opportunity Fund, a long-only fund that makes direct investments in micro-cap companies. He currently serves on the board of directors of Synaptogenix, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company. Mr. Schechter earned his B.A. in Public Policy/Political Science from Duke University and his J.D. from Fordham University School of Law.