Seedling Management

John Cvinar
John is an experienced senior executive in the medical device industry. Over the past thirty-one years, he has worked in a variety of senior management roles as Chief Executive Officer, General Manager and marketing executive in both early stage companies (Andro Diagnostics, Angstrom Medical, Transmedics, Uromed, Microgyn, Boston Medical Technologies, Genosis and Seedling Enterprises) and large companies (Bard and Datascope). During his career, John has worked in development of businesses that focus on meeting needs in emerging healthcare markets. He has consistently been on the forefront in finding and developing new technology approaches that shift the paradigm of care in healthcare including, for example: first in US development of the coronary balloon angioplasty procedure; vascular access occlusion technology; home fertility testing; nanotechnology bone substitutes and diabetes treatment devices. While Division President at CR Bard in 1990, John became a party to a regulatory dispute with FDA. An agreement was ultimately reached with all participants to resolve the matter. Since 1993, John has been recognized for his ability to form new healthcare ventures and find liquidity exits for shareholders through acquisition, merger and public offering. John currently holds eight patents for several innovative devices in health technology with additional patents in prosecution. He received his MBA from CW Post University, New York.

Andy Levine
Andy has thirty years of engineering and medical device research, development and manufacturing experience. Andy has developed and commercialized products with applications in cardiovascular medicine, gynecology, general surgery, thoracic surgery and urology. He possesses technical expertise in biomaterials, mechanism design, fluid mechanics and heat transfer. Prior to founding GI Dynamics, Andy was an independent consultant to the medical device industry and joined John Cvinar and Josh Tolkoff as a co-founder of Seedling Enterprises. Previously, he served in various high level engineering positions with Boston Scientific Corporation, Microsurge, Bard Reproductive Systems, Thermedics and Thermo Electron. He holds 32 patents and has 18 publications to his name. Andy holds a M.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Tufts University.

Josh Tolkoff
Josh has forty years of in-depth experience in research, development, manufacturing, regulatory affairs and general management of medical device companies. Josh started his career as the Vice President of Research and Development for Medi-Tech, which became Boston Scientific. Josh then went on to start two of his own companies: Harbor Medical, a company with technology for implantable venous access and ACT Medical, Inc., an outsourcing resource for medical device companies which was sold in 2000 to MedSource Technologies. Josh co-founded Seedling Enterprises in 1999 where he spearheaded the start up and eventually assumed the CEO position at LumeRx. On completion of LumeRx' Series A funding, Josh joined Ironwood Equity Ventures a Small Business Investment Company with particular interest in businesses located in low- and moderate-income areas, enterprise zones, women- and minority-owned businesses. Josh is recognized as a leading figure in the medical device community and currently serves on the board of several privately held companies, chaired MassMedic - a 300+ industry trade group, and chaired the advisory board of the Harvard-M.I.T. Health Science & Technology (HST) program. Josh holds an AB from Harvard College and an MS from MIT.