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.

Jason Campagna, M.D., Ph.D. has served as our Chief Medical Officer since December 2019, having previously served as Senior Vice President and Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis Program Leader since 2016. Prior to joining  Intercept, Dr. Campagna held a number of roles of increasing responsibility at The Medicines Company from 2010 to 2016, including most recently as Senior Vice President and Health Science Lead of Surgery and Perioperative Care. Earlier in his career, Dr. Campagna served as the Chief Medical Quality Officer at Cottage Health System and, prior to this, held faculty appointments at the University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Campagna also served as Managing Director of Profibrix B.V. following its acquisition by The Medicines Company in 2013, and as a Director of Annovation Biopharma, Inc. prior to its acquisition by The Medicines Company in 2015. Presently, Dr. Campagna serves on the Steering Committee of the Wallace H. Coulter Center for Translational Research at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Dr. Campagna received his M.D. and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology, as well as his bachelor’s degree, from the University of Miami. Dr. Campagna completed his post-graduate training at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.

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).

Sandip Kapadia has served as our Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer since July 2016. Mr. Kapadia has over 20 years of experience in building and leading finance and administration teams at life sciences companies both in the United States and abroad. Prior to joining Intercept, Mr. Kapadia held finance leadership positions over 19 years at Novartis and Novartis affiliates in the United States, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, including most recently Chief Financial Officer of North America at Novartis’s generic division, Sandoz. Mr. Kapadia has been a director of Passage Bio since January 2020 and Molecular Partners AG since April 2020, and previously was a director of Therachon AG. Mr. Kapadia earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration and accounting from Montclair State University, an M.B.A from Rutgers Graduate School of Management and is a certified public accountant.

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.

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.