Board of Directors

Neal Hunter
Chief Executive Officer

​Neal was the founding investor of Novan, Inc. and served as the Company’s Chairman for eight years, personally orchestrating the fund raising of over $100M in private financing. His 25 year track record of successfully raising capital for technology companies in both the public and private sectors began as a Co- founder of Cree, Inc. (NASDAQ:CREE). Mr. Hunter served multiple roles at Cree, including as the public company CEO and Chairman from 1994 to 2001 and then Chairman until 2005. Mr. Hunter has been either co-founder, founder, co-founding investor or founding investor in over ten significant start-up ventures in the areas of semiconductor materials and devices, aesthetic materials, software, gourmet food service, commercial and residential real estate, LED lighting systems and life sciences. Mr. Hunter’s proven expertise in technology transfer, from inception of innovations to the creation of market-changing products, has led to the transition to his new role as Managing Director of KnowBio, LLC, an RTP based incubator for platform based medical technology and biotechnology companies. Vast Therapeutics, Inc. and PhotonMD, Inc. are two companies that have emerged from the KNOW Bio platform.

Mark Schoenfisch, PhD 
President and Chief Scientific Officer

​A Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he has developed a dynamic research program in the field of nitric oxide. With nearly 20 years of experience as a chemist, he has published >100 peer-reviewed articles on nitric oxide-related technologies. He has a long-standing interest in developing macromolecular scaffolds that store and release nitric oxide for drug delivery and disease management applications. 

James Hackworth, PhD 

Dr. Hackworth is a pharmaceutical executive with an extensive track record in licensing, M&A, and partnership transactions, particularly ones with a high degree of complexity, and also drug commercialization. He has deep expertise in infectious diseases, the US pain market, and other areas. He began his career in strategy consulting with McKinsey and Company and currently serves as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Commercialization Strategy at Shionogi, Inc. He has helped Shionogi remake its US business through a series of transactions over several years and the creation of a commercial strategy to launch drugs generated from its pipeline. In addition, Dr. Hackworth serves as a Mid-Atlantic Bio-Angles Steering Committee member and Board member of Elysium Therapeutics. He graduated summa cum laude with a BS in physics from the Ohio State University in 1998 and a PhD in theoretical physics from Columbia University in 2006.