Brian Ellerman, MPA

With over 30 years of medical and health technology experience, Brian Ellerman worked from 2002 to 2017 for Paris-based pharma Sanofi, where he held numerous roles from site head overseeing the technical construction aspects of the Oro Valley R&D facility to high performance computing and big data. 

In 2013, he created the global technology scouting and partnering group, and traveled the world to connect the top incubators, accelerators, startups, and venture firms to critical business problems and corporate venture. Building on that success, in 2016 Ellerman was part of a corporate digital health strategy team looking to optimize the $4 billion clinical research operations through decentralized trials, telemedicine, and other technology-enhanced aspects of trial participant recruitment, enrollment, and retention. 

After leaving Sanofi at the end of 2017, Ellerman began to plan the renovation of the historic Roy Place Building in 2018 and founded Arizona FORGE in August of 2019. As a unit of University of Arizona Research, Innovation & Impact (now Research & Partnerships), FORGE had three missions: cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset in all students, advancing the entrepreneurial ecosystem in every community, and driving the scale and launch of promising startups.  

Ellerman has now moved his talents and passion to the Arizona Board of Regents, serving all of the state's universities. His first project is XLR8 PBC, a health tech scale-up program at the Phoenix Bioscience Core innovation district.