About | Team

Ken Song President & CEO | Ken has over 25 years of combined entrepreneurship, investing, clinical medicine, and research experience. Prior to Candid, he served as President and CEO at RayzeBio, a radiopharmaceutical company, from company launch in July 2020 through the $350M+ IPO in September 2023 and then $4.1B acquisition by BMS in February 2024. He also has served as CEO or chairman of Ariosa Diagnostics, Omniome, Metacrine, and Ablaze Pharmaceuticals, all of which have led to successful outcomes and collectively with RayzeBio provided over $5.5B in realized value to shareholders. He also currently serves as executive chairman of Averto Medical, board director at Perceptive Capital Solutions Corp,  and board director at ElevAAte, a non-profit organization for East Asian American leadership in biopharma. Earlier in his career, Ken was a venture capitalist at Venrock and a consultant at McKinsey & Company. Ken received a B.S. in biology from MIT and an M.D. from UCSF. Ken trained in internal medicine at UCSF and gastroenterology and hepatology at the University of Washington, and was a scientific research fellow at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. 

Tim Lu Chief Medical Officer & Chief Scientific Officer | Tim has over 20 years of clinical, research and development experience. Prior to Candid, Tim was the Chief Medical Officer of DICE Therapeutics where he built and led the Development organization from when it was a private company, became a public company, and through the acquisition and integration by Eli Lilly and Company. As the CMO, he oversaw clinical development, development sciences, development operations, regulatory, program management, biometrics, pharmacovigilance, and quality. Prior to DICE, he led development of early stage programs in inflammatory bowel disease and other immunological indications at Genentech in Early Clinical Development OMNI. He was the therapeutic area lead for IBD. 

Prior to Genentech, Tim was at UCSF where he was an internal medicine resident, gastroenterology fellow, postdoctoral fellow, and assistant adjunct professor. Tim holds an M.D., Ph.D. degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and B.S. in biology from Yale University.

Arvind Kush Chief Financial Officer & Chief Business Officer | Arvind has over 15 years of finance and investment banking experience. Prior to Candid, Arvind was Chief Financial Officer at RayzeBio, where he helped the company raise over $160 million in a private financing in 2022, $350+ million IPO in 2023 and $4.1 acquisition by BMS in February 2024.  Before joining RayzeBio, he was a Managing Director in the healthcare investment banking team at Bank of America Securities, advising biopharmaceutical companies on strategic and financing transactions. During his 13 years at Bank of America Securities, he executed over $100 billion in M&A transactions and over $12 billion in equity and equity-linked financings. Prior to joining Bank of America Securities, he was an engineer at Caritor India Pvt. Ltd.

Arvind holds a Bachelor in Engineering in Computer Science from Visvesvaraya Technological University and an MBA from Goizueta Business School, Emory University.

Bernie Huyghe Chief Technology Officer | Bernie has over 30 years of biologics CMC development, technology transfers, scale-up and manufacture for recombinant proteins, cell, and gene therapies.  Before joining Candid, Bernie previously held positions at Viridian Therapeutics, Allogene, Pfizer, CovX , Chugai, Schering-Plough and Canji among others. Bernie holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from the University of Florida and a Ph.D. in Biophysical Chemistry from The University of California, Berkeley. 

David Luo Senior Vice President, Clinical Operations | David has over 20 years of early and late phase drug development experience across multiple therapeutic areas, with a particular emphasis in immunotherapies and oncology.  David has made key clinical contributions to eight drug and drug device programs that resulted in regulatory approval by the FDA and other agencies. Most recently, David was Senior Vice President of Clinical Operations at Medikine, where he was responsible for clinical development and operations of its lead immuno-oncology biologic, an IL-7 mimetic. Prior to this, he served as VP of Clinical Operations for Erasca, where he led operational oversight of multiple clinical stage precision oncology programs; Synthorx, where he led clinical development and operations of its recombinant human non-alpha IL-2 biologic up until its acquisition by Sanofi; and Ignyta, where he oversaw multiple clinical stage precision oncology programs up until its acquisition by Roche, including its lead targeted therapy, Rozlytrek™, which was approved by regulatory agencies in the US, EU, and Japan.  Prior to Ignyta, David held multiple leadership positions within clinical operations at pharmaceutical and biotech companies, including Elevation Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Sunovion Pharmaceuticals) and Meritage Pharma (acquired by Shire), both of which subsequently achieved FDA approval in respiratory and inflammatory indications. 

David earned a Master of Public Health degree (with an emphasis in Toxicology and Environmental Health Sciences) from UCLA and a B.S. in Biology from UCSD.

Jeff Woodley General Counsel | Jeff has over a decade of corporate legal experience.  Prior to joining Candid, Jeff was the General Counsel at RayzeBio, where he was responsible for the legal, SEC, intellectual property and corporate governance functions, and led the legal aspects of the company’s $357 million initial public offering and its subsequent acquisition by BMS for $4.1 billion.  Prior to joining RayzeBio, he was the General Counsel and VP of Corporate Operations at Medalogix, a healthcare technology company, where he was responsible for the legal, intellectual property and corporate governance functions.  Jeff began his legal career at Latham & Watkins LLP, advising biopharmaceutical companies in all stages of development, from formation to early stage financing, IPO, M&A transactions, and public company representation.  Jeff received his J.D. from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Law and a B.A. in economics from UCLA.

Kathryn Shah SVP Portfolio and Program Management | Kathryn has 20 years of program management experience in the biotech/pharma industry.  Her PM leadership spans from discovery to post approval life cycle management.  Prior to Candid, Kathryn led programs at RayzeBio, Ultragenyx, AbbVie and Abbott.  She holds an MBA from HEC, Paris and a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from Virginia Tech.

Rozalyn Littler SVP of Regulatory and Quality | Rozalyn has over 20 years of experience in the biotech industry.  Before joining Candid, Rozalyn was the VP of Regulatory at RayzeBio.  Her tenure at RayzeBio culminated in the company’s sale to BMS for $4.1 billion.  Rozalyn has held positions in regulatory and quality at companies including Scios, MedImmune, Genentech, Prometheus, Heron Therapeutics and Metacrine.  Rozalyn holds a Bachelors of Science in Engineering from Oregon State University.