Joanne Kurtzberg Re-Elected President

Colleen Delaney new vice president; Charles Lu joins the Board

Joanne Kurtzberg, MD, director of the Carolinas Cord Blood Bank, Durham, N.C., has been re-elected president of the Cord Blood Association. The election of officers occurred at the annual meeting of the association’s Board of Directors at the Cord Blood Connect international congress in Miami Beach.

Newly elected as vice president is Colleen Delaney, MD, MSc, founder and scientific director of Nohla Therapeutics, Seattle, Wash.  Dr. Delaney is one of the founding directors of the association.

Others re-elected to office were:

  • Secretary – Gesine Kögler, PhD, director, Jose Carreras Cord Blood Bank and GMP Facility, University of Duesseldorf Medical Center, Duesseldorf, Germany
  • Treasurer – David Blackett, vice president of marketing and strategy, PerkinElmer ViaCord, Waltham, Mass.

Newly elected to the Board of Directors was Charles Lu, MBA, chief marketing officer for StemCyte, Inc., Baldwin Park, California. He previously was chief operating officer for his company and chief executive officer of StemCyte Taiwan.

Others, previously appointed to vacancies on the Board, but now elected to a full term, are:

  • Wolfgang Knirsch, PhD, chief executive officer of Vita 34 AG, Leipzig, Germany
  • John Wagner, Jr., MD, professor, Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn.
  • Jeffrey Wilson, assistant director of operations, MD Anderson Cord Blood Bank, Houston, Texas

CBA bylaws require that the 17-member board have a tripartite membership. Five seats are designated for representatives of public banks, five reserved for family banks, and seven are for the banking community at large. The at-large directors can be research investigators, transplant clinicians, patients, parents of patients, obstetricians, pediatricians, nurses, midwives, vendors, health policy experts or regulatory officials.