Our wireless health team

Changing the game in healthcare

With a team that has the experience and the know-how to make the enormous complexities of a wireless connection simple, Qualcomm Life is defining and connecting the wireless health network.

Rick Valencia, Vice President and General Manager, Qualcomm Life

Don Jones, Vice President, Global Strategy and Market Development

James R. Mault, M.D., F.A.C.S.., Vice President and Chief Medical Officer

Aiman Abdel-Malek, PhD, Vice President, Engineering

Anthony Shimkin, Senior Director, Marketing

Laurent Vandebrouck, Senior Director of Business Development, Europe

Chris Talbot, Senior Director, Business Development

Ed Siemens, Senior Director, Sales

Rajeev Rajan, Senior Director of Product Management

Greg LePeter, Senior Director, Legal Counsel

Clint McClellan, Senior Director, Strategic Marketing

Ilene Klein, MD, FAAFP, Chair, Qualcomm Life Advisory Council

Rick Valencia

Rick has more than 20 years of entrepreneurial innovation and executive leadership experience in rapid-growth, technology-enabled services organizations along with a proven track record in market disruption, strategy execution and value creation.  As the founder and leader of Qualcomm Life, he directs Qualcomm's product and technology strategy in the wireless health market. He also has a hand in driving wireless health innovation outside the company through Qualcomm Life's strategic partnerships with entities such as Rock Health, Wireless-Life Science Alliance and the USC Center for Body Computing and through oversight of the $100 million Qualcomm Life Fund.  Rick is an active member of ACHE, HIMSS and mHIMSS.

Earlier in Rick's career, as founder and CEO of ProfitLine, he cultivated his business savvy building the company from a one-man consulting firm into a $35 million enterprise that is now the West Coast arm of Tangoe Inc. (TNGO).  During Rick's tenure, ProfitLine was one of Inc. 500's fastest growing companies in America for three years and on Deloitte & Touche's Fast 50 companies four years in a row. Rick was awarded the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2003.

Rick is a native San Diegan and committed to the community.  He uses his business building know-how to help fellow entrepreneurs launch meaningful and enduring technology companies as a mentor at the Founder Institute and a member of the Executive Committee of the San Diego MIT Enterprise Forum.  He is a former chairman and long-time board member of Big Brothers Big Sisters of San Diego County and actively supports Rady Children's Hospital and the Pediatric Diabetes Research Center at UCSD.
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Don Jones

Don serves as vice president of business development and global strategy and market development for Qualcomm Life. He is responsible for Qualcomm's development of wireless technologies and platforms in the health, fitness and life sciences markets, and is recognized as a leader in the field. In 2005, he founded and is chairman of the Wireless Life Sciences Alliance (WLSA), a 501c(6) trade organization that works with both the wireless and health industries to enable new business models, new businesses and clinical process improvements in all sectors, including consumer health, fitness, healthcare services, healthcare IT, pharmaceutical and medical devices. Don is also a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Digital Health.  He is on the boards of the Alliance Healthcare Foundation and the American Telemedicine Association, and was a founding board member of the West Health Institute. In 2010, Don was named to the Consumer Products Innovations Board at Sanofi-Aventis Pharmaceuticals. Don holds a bachelor's degree in biology and bioengineering from the University of California, San Diego, a Juris Doctor from the University of San Diego and an MBA from the University of California, Irvine.  He holds multiple issued and pending patents in the use of mobile phones in incentive reward programs and in asynchronous media communications.
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James R. Mault, M.D., F.A.C.S.

James R. Mault, M.D., F.A.C.S., is the Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Qualcomm Life as a result of their April 2013 acquisition of HealthyCircles, a Care Coordination and Remote Patient Monitoring Software Platform Company founded and led by Dr. Mault since 2009. Prior to starting HealthyCircles, Dr. Mault was the Director of New Products and Business Development for the Health Solutions Group at Microsoft. Dr. Mault has more than 30 years of experience in senior executive positions in the Health IT and Medical Device industry as well as clinical medicine. Dr. Mault has founded five Health IT and medical device companies, leading these companies to develop novel devices and software technologies, FDA approvals, and strategic partnerships with numerous Fortune 500 companies. He is the named inventor of over 80 issued and pending US Patents for a variety of novel health information and medical device innovations. He has been board-certified in both General Surgery and Cardiothoracic Surgery, having specialized in heart and lung transplantation, thoracic oncology and critical care. He has conducted academic medical research under numerous grant awards from the National Institutes of Health, American Cancer Society, and others. He is the author of more than 60 scientific articles, chapters and books in the published medical literature. Dr. Mault holds a bachelor’s degree in Biology and a Medical Degree from the University of Michigan, and conducted his General Surgery and Cardiothoracic Surgery residency training at Duke University Medical Center.
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Aiman Abdel-Malek, PhD

Aiman joined Qualcomm Life from General Electric's Healthcare Division, where he served as GM and CTO for the Global Services Technology business, a $5 billion division of GE healthcare. There he led a global engineering team responsible for the development of software and systems platforms for predictive remote service technology and healthcare operational efficiency and quality applications. Previously, Aiman was the technology managing director for Pipeline Inspection International, a $400 million global business unit of GE Oil and Gas in the UK. Aiman also led the Remote Diagnostics Service business for GE Transportation, delivering a wireless based "Expert on Alert" locomotive information service, which currently runs on over 20,000 locomotives. In 1996, under NIH and Army grants, Aiman and team developed the first tele-mammography system for remote breast cancer screening, leveraging satellite technology and digital x-ray detectors in collaboration with Massachusetts General Hospital. The system was considered state-of-the-art within the telemedicine community. Aiman started his career at GE as a systems engineer in the Global R&D group in Albany, N.Y., leading the development of vision inspired signal processing algorithms for aerospace, industrial and medical applications.

Aiman served on GE's Corporate Software Board, helping to define GE's software business strategy, and on the Health Industry Business Communications Council (HIBCC). Aiman was an executive leader for the Image & Signal Processing Technology Council for GE Healthcare and for the GE Foundation Developing Health Community initiative. He earned his PhD in biomedical engineering from the University of Southern California, completing post-doctoral research at UCLA in neurology. He is a senior member of the IEEE and holds over 20 US and international patents.
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Anthony Shimkin

Anthony is senior director of marketing for Qualcomm Life.  With over 20 years of medical and technology experience, Anthony currently leads Qualcomm Life's global marketing efforts.  Most recently, Anthony served as vice president of marketing for Lantronix, a leading machine-to-machine (M2M) technology provider with more than 650 global healthcare customers.  He has held key marketing and innovation leadership roles at Quidel, a diagnostics manufacturer, Cardinal Health, a Fortune 19 healthcare company, Alaris Medical Systems and Neoforma.  Anthony also led the healthcare equity research team at Wedbush Securities and has consulted for several leading life sciences companies.  He holds an MS in executive leadership from the University of San Diego, an MBA in marketing and finance, an MA in medical sciences and a BA in psychology all from Boston University.
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Laurent Vandebrouck

Laurent is senior director of business development for Qualcomm Life in Europe, bringing to the role 25 years of experience in the telecommunications industry. Laurent joined Qualcomm in 2003, taking a position as sales director for Qualcomm subsidiary Qualcomm Wireless Business Solutions Europe. There he focused on the commercial development of EutelTRACS in Europe and North-Africa. He subsequently took a number of roles within Qualcomm and its subsidiaries, including managing director, GlobalTRACS Europe, and director EMEA, Carrier Strategy & New Business Development, Qualcomm Enterprise Services. He specialises in strategic business planning, commercial development and the assessment and pursuit of new business opportunities in the telecommunications sector. Prior to working with Qualcomm, Laurent held a variety of roles within the telecommunications industry. He holds a major in marketing from the Institut Européen des Affaires and a major in management from IEA-CERFIA. He is fluent in French and English with an understanding of Italian.
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Chris Talbot

Chris is senior director of business development for Qualcomm Life.  In this role, Chris leads the team responsible for the development of the 2net™ Ecosystem, which consists of medical device companies, healthcare services businesses, application companies, informatics alliances, wireless operators, technology partners, and physician and healthcare provider networks. Chris founded the 2net Platform at Qualcomm Labs, leading the team that created the core products and services that set the foundation for the Qualcomm Life business.  With 20 years of business development and marketing leadership, Chris has spent his career starting new domestic and international businesses within and outside Qualcomm across various sectors spanning machine-to-machine (M2M) wireless communications, commercial space missions, defense surveillance systems and telehealth systems and services. Prior to Qualcomm, Chris spent 10 years at MacDonald, Dettwiler & Associates, helping grow the company into Canada's leading space and information services company, from annual revenues of $60 million to $1 billion by creating new commercial space missions, leading the company into new market segments, and developing international business in Europe, Asia and the US.  Chris holds an MBA from the University of British Columbia and a bachelor's degree in commerce from McGill University.
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Ed Siemens

Ed is senior director of sales for Qualcomm Life and has over 25 years of medical sensor experience. Prior to Qualcomm Life, Ed served as director of sales and marketing for A&D Engineering's medical division where he helped to build the digital health business, establishing A&D as a global leader in connected diagnostic sensors. He has held key sales and leadership positions at both medical device start-ups and at established device manufactures like Omron Healthcare. Ed holds an MBA from Pepperdine University and a BFA from the California College of Arts & Crafts.
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Rajeev Rajan

Rajeev drives product management and strategy, and provides technology leadership for wireless healthcare products and services. Rajeev co-founded the 2net business at Qualcomm Labs, leading the engineering and technology teams that created the core products and services that laid the foundation for Qualcomm Life. With 20 years of industry experience and leadership, Rajeev has spent his career building innovative software, systems and wireless technology products and services for global markets including North America, Europe, India, China and Southeast Asia. In his 15 years at Qualcomm, he has worked on various assignments, such as software and systems engineering activities in CDMA2000 1X, EV-DO, UMTS, International Roaming, Location-based services and Network assessment of carrier networks. His entrepreneurial spirit has seen him ideate and execute to commercialization multiple in-house startup projects, operating in various leadership roles including Engineering, Product Management, Business Development, Program and Project Management.

Rajeev currently has several patents granted and several pending at Qualcomm. He has authored multiple papers, spoken at forums and panels and is co-author of the 2013-release textbook "Wireless Health: Remaking of Medicine by Pervasive Technologies". He holds a BS in Physics, MS in Computer Science, an executive MBA from the University of California San Diego (UCSD), and Graduate Certificate in Wireless Health. He is currently pursuing an MS in Biomedical Engineering focused on Wireless Health from Case Western Reserve University.
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Greg LePeter

Greg serves as senior director and legal counsel for Qualcomm Life. Prior to Qualcomm Life, Greg served in the Americas as associate general counsel, assistant corporate secretary, ethics and compliance director and privacy officer for ResMed, a global leader in regulated medical devices used to treat respiratory disorders and sleep-disordered breathing. While at ResMed, Greg provided primary legal support for corporate and commercial operations in the region, advised on regulatory matters in product safety, device marketing and information privacy, and served as lead internal counsel in the acquisition of new technologies. Prior to joining ResMed, Greg served as corporate counsel to Premier, Inc., a group purchasing organization that currently serves more than 2,500 US hospitals and 76,000+ other healthcare sites, where he assisted the healthcare informatics product lines and negotiated contracts for clinical, biomedical device and other capital equipment supplies. Greg holds a bachelor's degree in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia, a Juris Doctor from Washington University, a master's in health administration from the Washington University School of Medicine and a professional certificate in regulatory affairs in the biologic industry from the University of California, San Diego.
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Clint McClellan

Clint is currently the senior director of strategic marketing for Qualcomm Life where his responsibilities include establishing opportunities in the wireless health market. He joined Qualcomm in December of 1997 as director of strategic marketing. Since joining Qualcomm, he has served in business development roles and established the Global Industry Analyst programme and Global Market Intelligence programme. Currently, he is the president and chairman of the board of the Continua Health Alliance. Clint has a wealth of wireless industry analysis experience. Prior to joining Qualcomm, he served as a senior analyst for Gartner Group/Dataquest's Telecommunications Group in its personal communications wireless programme. While at Dataquest, Clint served as a technology news analyst for two years on the Good Morning San Jose show at KNTV, an ABC affiliate, where he presented analysis and commentary on daily news events affecting high-technology industries. Previously, he worked as a marketing specialist at Telephone House Nippo in Kobe, Japan, and for CH2M Hill Consulting Engineers in Oakland, Calif. Clint holds a BS degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
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Ilene Klein, MD, FAAFP

Ilene serves as the chief medical advisor for Qualcomm Life and director of global employee health services for Qualcomm, Inc. Ilene has more than 30 years of administrative and clinical experience in the public and private healthcare sectors. As the former deputy director of operations for the New York City Department of Health's Bureau of Child Health, Ilene helped to create a city-wide network of pediatric primary care homes in underserved communities. After pursuing a career in clinical medicine, she was a partner in a private family practice in Massachusetts. There she served as the first chief of service for the new Department of Primary Care at Martha's Vineyard Hospital. Ilene came to San Diego in 2007 to open Qualcomm's first onsite employee health center, where she served as its medical director until June 2011. Ilene is a board- certified family physician and a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians. She earned her medical degree from Harvard Medical School, where she was an Edward Kass Fellow at the East Boston Neighborhood Health Centre. She completed her residency training through the Department of Family Medicine at Brown University. Ilene holds bachelors and master's degrees in music therapy from New York University.
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