Leadership

Jerome Durso serves as our President and Chief Executive Officer and as a member of our Board of Directors. Prior to becoming CEO in January 2021, Mr. Durso served as Chief Operating Officer since joining Intercept in February 2017. Mr. Durso has over 25 years of experience in building and leading commercial and business operations at life sciences companies both in the United States and abroad. Prior to joining Intercept, Mr. Durso served as a consultant to the biopharmaceutical industry from September 2015 to February 2017. Mr. Durso has spent the majority of his career at Sanofi, a global pharmaceutical company, where he most recently served as Senior Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer of the Global Diabetes Division from June 2011 to April 2015. From 2010 to 2011, Mr. Durso was Senior Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer of Sanofi’s U.S. pharmaceuticals business. Prior to that, he served in a number of commercial leadership roles of increasing responsibility in business unit and brand management, marketing and sales since he first joined Sanofi in 1993. Mr. Durso earned his bachelor’s degree in marketing from the University of Notre Dame.

Gail Cawkwell, M.D., Ph.D. has served as our SVP, Medical Affairs, Safety & Pharmacovigilance since September 2018, having previously served as SVP, Medical Affairs since February 2018. Prior to joining Intercept, Dr. Cawkwell worked for Purdue Pharma L.P., where she served as Special Advisor to the Board of Directors from September 2017 to February 2018, Chief Medical Officer from January 2015 to September 2017 and VP, Medical Affairs from November 2014 to January 2015.  From 2000 to November 2014, Dr. Cawkwell served in a number of roles of increasing responsibility at Pfizer Inc., including most recently as Vice President Medicine Team Lead for Pfizer’s tofacitinib franchise.  Dr. Cawkwell also served as a Clinical Instructor of Pediatrics at Columbia Presbyterian Health Center from 2002 to 2015 and previously held several other clinical and academic posts.  Dr. Cawkwell received her Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati, her M.D. from McGill University in Montreal, Canada and her bachelor’s degree from Duke University.

Lisa DeFrancesco serves as our Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs & Investor Relations, having previously served as VP, Investor Relations since 2019. Ms. DeFrancesco has over 20 years of experience in investor relations, finance and communications roles predominantly in pharmaceuticals and healthcare. She joined Intercept from Melinta Therapeutics where she served as SVP, Corporate Affairs and was a member of the company’s Executive Leadership Team. Prior to Melinta, Ms. DeFrancesco held roles of increasing responsibility over an eight-year tenure at Allergan plc (formerly Actavis and Watson Pharmaceuticals prior to its acquisition of Allergan), most recently in the role of Vice President, Investor Relations and a member of the Operations Leadership Team. Ms. DeFrancesco holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Seton Hall University.

David Ford has served as our Chief Human Resources Officer since May 2017. He brings over 25 years of experience in a variety of human resources roles across the United States, Europe, Latin America and New Zealand. Prior to joining Intercept, Mr. Ford spent nearly 15 years at Sanofi, where he most recently served as Vice President Human Resources for the Sanofi Genzyme global business unit from January 2016 to May 2017. Prior to that role, from November 2011 through December 2015, Mr. Ford served as Vice President Human Resources for the Sanofi North American businesses. Mr. Ford joined the pharmaceutical industry in 2002 as the HR Director — United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland for Sanofi-Synthelabo. Mr. Ford holds a master’s degree in business administration from INSEAD, Fontainebleau (France).

Linda Richardson serves as our Chief Commercial Officer. Prior to her appointment to this role in February 2021, she served as Senior Vice President and Head of our Cholestasis Program since joining Intercept in 2018. Ms. Richardson has more than 30 years of commercial strategy, sales and marketing experience. Prior to joining Intercept, Ms. Richardson served as Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer at Chimerix, Inc., where she oversaw marketing, market access and reimbursement, market research and analytics, forecasting, supply chain and distribution strategies, commercial operations, product communications and sales. From 2008 to 2013, Ms. Richardson held commercial leadership roles of increasing responsibility at Sanofi, where she led the company’s global GLP-1 diabetes franchise. Prior to joining Sanofi, Ms. Richardson held roles of increasing responsibility at both Reliant Pharmaceuticals and GlaxoSmithKline. Ms. Richardson has been recognized by PM360 as an “ELITE 100” award winner in the pharmaceutical industry, by the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association as a “Rising Star,” and by PharmaVOICE as one of its “Top 100 Most Inspiring People in Life Sciences.” Ms. Richardson holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Pennsylvania.

Rocco Venezia serves as our Chief Accounting Officer and acting Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, and brings more than 20 years of relevant finance and accounting experience to the role. Prior to becoming Chief Accounting Officer in March 2021, Mr. Venezia served as Intercept’s Corporate Controller since 2016, where he led the expansion of the company’s finance and accounting department during its transition from development-stage to a fully integrated commercial organization. Before he joined Intercept, Mr. Venezia was the Assistant Corporate Controller at IKARIA, Inc., now part of Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, from 2013 to 2016, where he led the accounting and finance team through operational and system transformations. From 2000 to 2013, Mr. Venezia held roles of increasing responsibility at KPMG LLP and Arthur Andersen, where he led multinational audits, transactions and due diligence engagements across several industries. Mr. Venezia also spent three years at KPMG LLP’s Department of Professional Practice where he supported engagement teams on complex technical accounting, compliance matters and audit methodology. Mr. Venezia holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Kean University and is a certified public accountant in New Jersey and New York.

Christian Weyer, M.D., M.A.S. has served as our EVP, Research & Development since November of 2017. Dr. Weyer’s career in metabolic drug development spans more than 20 years, involving clinical studies and regulatory submissions at all stages of product development and across the continuum of diabetes, obesity and NAFLD/NASH. Prior to joining Intercept, Dr. Weyer was President and Chief Development Officer at ProSciento, Inc., a leading clinical R&D service provider focused on diabetes, NAFLD/NASH and obesity, from December 2015 to November 2017. Dr. Weyer has served as a senior executive in several companies, including as President, Chief Executive Officer and a director of Fate Therapeutics, Inc. from October 2012 to November 2015, where he steered the company’s transition into a publicly-traded cellular therapeutics company, and as Senior Vice President of R&D at Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc., where he contributed to the development and approval of several first-in-class medicines for diabetes and lipodystrophy. Before joining Amylin, Dr. Weyer worked at the National Institutes of Health, NIDDK, conducting clinical research on the pathogenesis of obesity and type 2 diabetes. Dr. Weyer received his M.D. and clinical training at the Department of Metabolic Disorders, World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Diabetes Treatment and Prevention, at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany and holds a postdoctoral master’s degree in advanced clinical research from the University of California, San Diego.