Our Leadership

Meet the leadership behind ExstoBio

Juan Carlos Pacheco, JD, MBA

Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Juan Carlos is a lawyer and cross-functional business leader delivering innovation and driving results while empowering his team to achieve excellence. His previous experience includes healthcare acquisitions with NextGen Growth Partners, legal clerkship with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of NC, legal clerkship with the U.S. District Courts, and seminary formation with the Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta.

Professional Experience: 

Publications:

The Dr. Carlie Podcast

Kyle Jensen, Ph.D.

Consulting Chief Scientist
Dr. Jensen received his Ph.D. in neurophysiology from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City where his research focused on circuit ephys and endocannabinoid—cannabinoid receptor signaling. Dr. Jensen completed his postdoctoral research in the Tadross Lab at Duke University where he further expanded his expertise into synaptic transmission and neuroplasticity.

Professional Experience: 

The Dr. Carlie Podcast

David Lee

Co-Founder & Chief Pain Scientist
David is a Pharmacology Ph.D. candidate at the UNC School of Medicine. His research focuses on uncovering precision pharmacological approaches for analgesia (pain relief), in hopes to combat the current dual chronic pain and opioid epidemic.

Professional Experience: 

The Dr. Carlie Podcast

ExstoBio Advisory Board

Brian Spencer, MD, MBA

Healthcare Strategy
Dr. Brian Spencer has more than 20 years of leadership experience in healthcare, including Chief Resident, Medical Practice Owner, Chief of Surgery, Chief of Medical Staff, Executive Director - VA Innovation Center, and Strategic Advisor to healthcare startups. During his journey, his goals remained consistent, ‘improve lives and bring great ideas to realities.’

Todd Purves, MD, Ph.D.

Surgey & Pediatrics
Dr. Purves is a Professor of Surgery at Duke University Medical Center. He has a clinical practice in pediatric urology, treating children with congenital defects urinary dysfunction. He is also the Principal Investigator of Duke University's Urinary Dysfunction Laboratory, focusing on the role of the innate immune system in benign urinary pathology.

Erick Swaine

GTM Strategy
Erick Swaine is a global ‘go-to-market’ (GTM) strategist and data experience platform facilitator to the financial services community, specific to advanced analytics adoption. With this experience, Erick has worked with some of the largest private equity and investment banks in the world around the long-term benefits of a well-developed advanced analytics and artificial intelligence technology roadmap development.

Alan Brookhart, Ph.D.

Real World Evidence
Dr. Brookhart is a Professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences at Duke University. Dr. Brookhart has spent his career developing epidemiologic and statistical methods for improving learning from real-world healthcare data. Dr. Brookhart also co-founded RxAnte, Inc. and NoviSci, Inc., both with successful exits.

Marne Coit, JD/LLM

Cannabis Industry & Regulations
Marne is Principal at Coit Consulting and a senior level legal professional with more than 15 years of experience in food and agricultural law. Marne launched and ran N.C.’s Hemp Extension program to educate and support more than 1,500 licensed hemp growers and other industry professionals in North Carolina. Marne is also a Board Member of the Global Hemp Association.

Ben Stokes, MBA

Growth & Scaling
Ben is the Founding Partner of Chasing Rainbows Investment Fund. He was named a “Top 100 Investor” by Alumni Spotlight in 2022 and is recognized by the NVCA, as one of the top LGBTQ+ investors making an impact. Ben founded SocialTable, a social platform used on every continent. Recently, Ben was awarded Venture Capital Journal’s 2023 “40 under 40.”

Darryl Henderson, JD

Business Strategy
Darryl is a business management generalist with 30 years of global business experience as an HR executive, chief compliance officer, executive coach, entrepreneur, business management consultant, and attorney. Most recently, Darryl served as SVP, Head of HR for TILT Holdings Inc. He has steered HR and other business functions across several industries, such as biotech, financial services, CPG, colleges/universities, and legal cannabis.

Curtis Lockshin, Ph.D.

Drug Delivery
Dr. Lockshin is the CSO of Xenetic Biosciences. He previously served as CEO of SciVac Therapeutics, CTO of VBI Vaccines, CEO of Guardum Pharmaceuticals, and VP of R&D for OPKO Health. Dr. Lockshin currently serves ad Board Member of Phio Pharmaceuticals and Director of the Ruth K. Broad Biomedical Research Foundation, a Duke University Support Corporation.

Careers

Join our growing team.

An active and rising award-winning start-up

Learn more about our activities and impact as a rising start up

Rankin Innovator Acceleration Award

“The Rankin Innovator Acceleration Award exemplifies the first-in-class opportunities at UNC for student bioentrepreneurs. I look forward to building a strong business foundation to complement my scientific studies under this generous award.” - David Lee

Inicio Ventures Award

Inicio Ventures Pitch Awards is a startup competition manager focused on showcasing and supporting Latinx-led ventures and regional startup ecosystems across the US.

Innovate Carolina 1789 Fund - Award Recipient

The Venture Catalyst Program is led by KickStart Venture Services in collaboration with Innovate Carolina. The program allows founders of UNC-affiliated startups and innovations to converge, collaborate and grow young companies with the support of talented graduate students and postdocs.

Launch Chapel Hill 3.0 Startup Accelerator

Launch Chapel Hill is a startup accelerator, co-working space and community of innovators that values and supports all people to encourage innovative thinking, individual empowerment, community outreach, economic development, and impactful change that lifts us all.

Venture Capital Investment Competition: VCIC

Global VCIC is the world's largest venture capital competition with over 120 university and graduate school teams competing.

“Couldn’t speak more highly of ExstoBio.”

Joe changed his life when he started using ExstoBio.

4/20/2022

Day of Incorporation

50.9 Million

Amount of Americans who use Cannabis-as-a-Medicine.

$1,119.50 USD

Average revenue per user in U.S.A.

40+

Countries who have positive medical cannabis legislation.