About
RockStep Solutions
Meet the people who make Climb rock.
Chuck Donnelly
CEO/BOD
Chuck has published articles and papers in peer-reviewed journals, and presented at conferences around the world. As CEO, Chuck brings a wealth of business experience, leadership, and management experience to the RockStep team.
Julie Morrison
President/BOD
As President of RockStep, Julie manages all company operations and works closely with the CEO to develop the company’s strategy, financial models, and investment portfolio. Julie has published articles on information systems for research and lectured at industry conferences.
Ray Pawlicki
Chairman of the Board/Advisor
In his former role as Chief Information Officer (CIO) at BiogenIdec and a member of the Executive Committee, Ray Pawlicki was instrumental in restructuring the IT organization, and transforming IT into a strategic asset pivotal to the $8 billion biotech company’s success. Prior to BiogenIdec, he worked for eight years at Novartis Pharmaceuticals, A.G., serving as both CIO of the U.S. affiliate and Global CIO of the Switzerland-based, $27 billion enterprise.
For RockStep, Ray works closely with the RockStep team providing deep strategic guidance.
Tom Arneman
Board of Directors/Advisor
Tom Arneman was Founder and President of Ceiba Solutions (managing invention of Lab IT services and application externalization for Pharma RD IT) and Weka Solutions (a Digital Health incubator helping Pharma create new value from internal technology investment). Tom took both companies to exit and is now immersed in helping technology startups succeed and scale.
Tom brings significant experience to RockStep in taking companies from startup to scale in the biopharmaceutical industry.
Julie Frearson
Board of Directors/Advisor
Julie Frearson, Ph.D. leads Charles River’s effort in developing and managing strategic technology partnerships, which are fundamental to the Company’s continued growth and future market leadership. She also plays a key role in the evaluation of Charles River’s strategic acquisitions.
Prof. Frearson has substantial experience in early-stage drug discovery, across multiple gene families and therapeutic areas, as a result of roles with The Babraham Institute (Cambridge, UK), Zeneca UK, Cambridge Drug Discovery, BioFocus, and a tenured faculty position in the Drug Discovery Unit of the University of Dundee. She has also served as Director for Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance (SULSA), and on Medical Research Council and Wellcome Trust expert committees. Prof. Frearson is author of more than 50 peer-reviewed publications.
Steve Gallagher
Board of Directors/Advisor
Steve, along with co-founder Alastair Hill, founded Dotmatics following eight years’ industrial and academic experience. Steve was instrumental in taking Dotmatics from a scientific software start-up company to a multi-million dollar business supporting the world’s leading pharmaceutical, biotechnology and chemicals companies.
Prior to Dotmatics, he provided research IT solutions to R&D teams as a Senior Systems Analyst at Merck Pharmaceuticals, MSD from 2000 to 2005. Steve held a post-doctoral research position at Los Alamos Research Laboratory from 1997 to 2000 which reinforced his belief in the importance of collaborative research, across both geographies and domains. He holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Warwick.
Matt Hoffner
Board of Directors Observer/Advisor
Matt started his career with Exxon where he was a field engineer and eventually a senior manager with their industrial and chemical divisions throughout the US. He has been involved with a number of start-up companies and organizations since coming to ME in 1987, including a B2B marketing and sales outsourcing company that had over 100 professionals at client locations throughout the US.
He was the President and CEO of JobsInTheUS, the parent company of JobsInME that realized exceptional growth before a successful sale in 2006. In 2008, he joined with a partner in the UK to start an international job board marketplace called Jobg8 which has grown to be a major trading platform within that industry. He was appointed to the board of the Maine Venture Fund for 6 years and was the chairman of that fund from 2014 through 2016. Matt currently serves part time as an ER with MTI working with their portfolio companies and applicants to develop success strategies for their individual companies.
Nat Henshaw
Board of Directors Observer/Advisor
Nat Henshaw founded CEI Ventures, a for-profit venture capital subsidiary of CEI in 1993. As president, he directs the investment of community development venture capital into progressive companies in Maine and New England. Under his leadership, CEI Ventures has raised over $67 mission in funds from a mix of impact investors including individuals, foundations, community economic development entities and banks motivated, in part, by Community Reinvestment Act credit.
Nat and his team have invested in 67 companies across five funds, helping to create 2,800 new jobs in geographic regions and with demographic populations often overlooked by traditional venture capital investors.
