Sante Ventures

Casey Cunningham is a physician-investor with 25 years in oncology and hematology who, as partner and Chief Scientific Officer, frequently assumes CMO roles to shape clinical strategy and trial design.

Former U.S. Air Force emergency physician and combat veteran (two Iraq deployments), James Eadie leads device practice focused on structural heart and interventional cardiology and guides teams through early commercialization.

Casey Cunningham, MD, joined Santé Ventures in 2008 as Chief Scientific Officer, where he focuses on biotechnology. He previously held a faculty position at Harvard Medical School and served as Associate Director of the Mary Crowley Cancer Research Center, an early-phase clinical trial institute focused on gene and cell-based therapies. He has also taken operating roles as Chief Medical Officer at several Santé portfolio companies.

Dennis McWilliams combines visceral founder empathy—having shouldered financial risk and creatively financed Apollo Endosurgery through the 2008–09 crisis—with rare transparency about VC mechanics, LP expectations, and fund dynamics.

Douglas French, former Ascension Health CEO who created its venture arm, brings 30+ years of healthcare leadership and pre-med biology, offering a clinically informed, operator perspective on health-tech and medtech.

James Eadie is a Managing Director at Santé, where he leads the firm's medical device investment practice, having joined in 2009. He works with entrepreneurs from company inception through clinical development and early commercialization, with prior investments including TVA Medical, Claret Medical, Millipede, Farapulse, and Laminar. A board-certified emergency medicine physician, he previously served in the U.S. Air Force, including as Vice Chair of Emergency Medicine at a Level I trauma center and two combat deployments to Iraq. He holds an MD from the Harvard–MIT HST program, an MBA from UT McCombs, and a BS in Bioengineering from the University of Michigan.

Joe Cunningham co-founded Santé Ventures in 2006 and has expertise in healthcare delivery systems, physician associations, and compensation models. He previously served as a healthcare Venture Partner at Austin Ventures, Vice Chair of Ascension Health Ventures' investment committee, Chief Medical Officer of Providence Health System, and Executive Director of the Providence Health Alliance. He holds an MBA from Baylor University, an MD and BS from Texas A&M University, and is board-certified in Internal Medicine and in Quality Assurance and Peer Review.

Kevin Lalande, a repeat founder and founding MD/CIO, is unusually hands-on in portfolio strategy, blending technical AI fluency with a focus on platform companies that change drug discovery risk-reward.

Omar Khalil heads the Boston office and rejoined VC after senior commercial roles at Baxter, Baxalta and Kaléo, bringing payer-focused market access expertise to scale early clinical products to billion-dollar franchises.

Auriel August, MD is a practicing surgeon-turned-investor who applies surgical training to make decisions with incomplete information and serves on panels bridging clinical practice and adoption of early-stage medical technologies.

Michael Gutbrod combines a Cold Spring Harbor PhD in neurobiology and MIT CSAIL postdoc integrating deep learning with adult stem cell models, enabling first-principles evaluation of complex biotech platforms.

Ashley Seehusen leads an affiliated startup studio that forms seed-stage medtech, biotech, and healthtech companies through structured incubation, talent matching, and intensive coaching to produce Series A–ready founding teams.

Thomas Krummel, a pediatric surgeon-turned-investor who co-directed Stanford Biodesign for nearly two decades and helped pioneer neonatal ECMO, bridges an incubator and early-stage healthcare fund, shaping concepts used by millions.

Cardiac surgeon and medical-device engineer who prototypes in machine shops, holds 90–120+ U.S. patents for TVA Medical and BiVACOR, and co-led the first successful continuous-flow pulseless total artificial heart implantation.

Louis Bock built a biotechnology practice at a historically tech-focused venture firm, backing early winners like Seagen and Horizon, and brings bench-to-business experience from Genentech/Gilead plus ASU tech-transfer board service.

Mariel Bolhouse works at Santé Ventures, where she explores new investment themes and incubates companies that may become Series A investments. She previously was a Biodesign Innovation Fellow at Stanford University, identifying unmet healthcare needs and developing technologies to address them, and held new product development roles at Stryker Neurovascular building therapies for stroke patients. She holds a BS in biomedical engineering with honors from the University of Texas at Austin.

Auriel August works with Santé Ventures on its early-stage portfolio, focusing on medical devices and healthcare services. She previously served as a Physician-in-Residence at IDEO's Design for Health Studio and completed the Stanford Biodesign Innovation Fellowship, and trained as a general surgeon at Stanford. She holds an MD from Dartmouth Medical School and a BS in biomedical engineering from Duke University.