Jim Woody

Jim Woody brings more than 30 years of pharmaceutical research, drug development, and management experience to Latterell Venture Partners, which he joined as a partner in 2005. He holds an M.D. from Loma Linda University, a Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of London, and completed training in Pediatric Immunology at Duke University and at Children's Hospital Boston (Harvard). He has authored or co-authored over 140 scientific publications.

His operating career spans the military, academia, and industry. Woody served as a Navy Medical Officer, leading the Navy Transplant Research Program, and rose to Commanding Officer and Director of the U.S. Naval Medical Research and Development Command in Bethesda, Maryland, earning the Navy Legion of Merit. He was Professor of Pediatrics and Microbiology at Georgetown University School of Medicine (1982–1996). In industry, he served as Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice President of R&D at Centocor — where he helped develop Remicade, the first TNF-inhibitor biologic, as well as ReoPro — and later as President and General Manager of Roche Bioscience (the former Syntex) in Palo Alto, California.

At LVP, Woody combined his scientific depth with operating leadership of portfolio companies. He was the founding CEO of OncoMed Pharmaceuticals, a cancer therapeutic-antibody company built around science spun out of the University of Michigan, and he served as a board member of ForteBio and ProteinSimple (Cell Biosciences), two antibody/protein-analysis instrument companies that were both successfully acquired.

Beyond his investing work, Woody has been active in the regional healthcare and civic community, serving as a former Chairman of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, as a co-founder of the National Marrow Donor Program (which has supported tens of thousands of transplants), and on the board of Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford, where he chairs the Quality, Service, and Safety Committee.

• Invests in early-stage healthcare and life-sciences companies — biotech, pharma, medical devices, diagnostics, research instruments, biomaterials, and healthcare IT — consistent with LVP's stated focus on "new technologies that can benefit patients."
• Backs companies where deep clinical, scientific, and drug-development expertise is a differentiator; LVP positions itself as a team of partners who add technical, clinical, operational, and entrepreneurial value beyond capital.
• Woody's particular value-add is R&D leadership and drug-development strategy — his background gives portfolio companies guidance on development planning, regulatory pathways, and business development.
• Comfortable with company-building from inception (he served as founding CEO of an LVP portfolio company), so he is suited to seed-stage, science-heavy ventures rather than later growth rounds.