Jack Kavanaugh – Noted Doctor and Esteemed Business Leader

During his remarkable career, Jack as Founder, CEO, and Chairman of the Board, has helped in commercializing several health-related and other technologies. He has founded and led organizations such as Calhoun Visions to create next-generation medical treatments.

JackKavanaugh started his remarkable career as a successful dentist. An unfortunate skiing accident prevented him to practice dentistry again, as he broke his neck and severely shattered his leg in that incident. After recovering from this turning point, he went ahead to earn his MBA from the University of California, Los Angeles.

After that, he worked in acquisitions and mergers with a former partner who was a Managing Director/Senior Partner at McKenzie International. They formed the International Strategy Consulting Group (management and MBA consulting organization) in 1984.

As Kavanaugh’s career continued in private equity, he subsequently returned to his medical field. He obtained his M.D. degree from U.S.C and completed his surgical residency at U.C.L.A’s Jules Stein Institute. Till 2008, he served as a part-time visiting professor at U.L.C.A and taught eye surgery to fellow residents. In the first year of his residency, Kavanaugh founded Amerident, a healthcare service center that was honored with more than 30 community service awards and also a state congressional medal of honor for their work with infants.

Kavanaugh continued in private equity, and in the year 2000, he held the first board meeting of Calhoun Vision, Inc., which is a biotechnology organization that has developed the world’s first and only light adjustable lens used for cataract surgery.  From 2000, he served as a board member, after that, he served as Chairman from 2008 to 2012. 

 

Dr. Kavanaugh has also served the board of PreCash, which is a telecommunication and financial service organization. In 2001, he turned away the insolvency proceedings and engineered a major turnaround. After two years, Inc. Magazine declared PreCash as one of the United State’s fastest-growing companies in profits.

In 2008, he founded ZetaRx Biosciences, Inc., an organization with a leading edge of immunotherapy for the treatment of cancer. He served as Chairman and CEO both till June 2012 and remained a consultant to the Board. In 2013, ZetaRx was sold, and it became a core component of Juno Therapeutics. Juno was declared the largest biotech IPO of the year in 2014 and reached a market cap of $5.5 billion.

Apart from that, Jack Kavanaugh and his wife Leslie are supporting numerous NGO’s and charity organizations, including the esteemed City of Hope, which is one of only 41 Comprehensive Cancer Center in the U.S., which has authorization of National Cancer Institute.