Alan Goldhammer, PhD

Board Chair

Dr. Goldhammer is an independent consultant in drug regulatory affairs. He received his BA in chemistry from UC Santa Barbara and his PhD in biological chemistry from Indiana University.  He held an NIH post-doctoral fellowship at Cornell University and was a Senior Staff Fellow in the Clinical Endocrinology Branch, NIDDK. Dr. Goldhammer spent 27 years in the biopharmaceutical industry in regulatory affairs and drug safety, retiring in 2010 as the Vice President for Scientific and Regulatory Affairs at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).  While at PhRMA, Dr. Goldhammer coordinated several projects that led to public/private partnerships between the FDA, NIH, and the pharmaceutical industry and also received two awards for exceptional service.  Dr. Goldhammer has served on advisory panels for the Institute of Medicine, the Office of Technology Assessment, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency.  Dr. Goldhammer currently assists industry and academic clients on matters of drug development and drug safety. He also chairs the FAES Investment Committee.

Board Chair

Kathryn Norcross, JD

1st Vice Chair

Retired Chief, Appellate Litigation Unit, Legal Division, FDIC

Ms. Norcross is a lawyer with more than 40 years of experience in private practice and the federal government. Ms. Norcross served the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in its Legal Division for 33 years, retiring from the role of Chief, Appellate Litigation Unit. At the FDIC, she supervised lawyers who briefed and argued appeals pending in federal and state courts across the country involving directors’ and officers’ liability, federal tax, commercial, bankruptcy, banking, employment and administrative law issues. Before that, she supervised lawyers in FDIC’s Commercial Litigation Unit who represented the FDIC at the trial level in cases that arose in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. She has been involved in some of the largest bank failures in the nation’s history, including as FDIC’s chief negotiator for the settlement of large lawsuits arising out of the failure of Washington Mutual Bank. Ms. Norcross also taught Appellate Advocacy at American University’s Washington College of Law, where she received the Adjunct Professor of the Year Award for Excellence in Teaching. She is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, and holds licenses to practice law in Maryland, DC, Texas and NJ. She has filed briefs or appeared before every Federal Circuit Court, numerous Federal District Courts, and many state courts.

Carol J. Thiele, PhD

2nd Vice Chair

Dr. Thiele*, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD. Dr. Thiele received her BA in Biology from the University of California, San Diego and her PhD in Microbiology & Immunology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She received Cancer Research Institute and Damon-Runyan Fellowships to study the genetic structure of immunoglobulin genes with Dr. J.F. Mushinski at the Genetics Branch, NCI. Later she joined the Pediatric Oncology Branch to study the molecular genetics of childhood solid tumors. In 1988 she was appointed Head of the Cell & Molecular Biology Section. Dr. Thiele was a founding editor of the journal Cell Death & Differentiation. With the NIH Women Scientist Advisors, she worked to successfully lobby for normalization of pay irrespective of gender. As Chair of the Division’s Mentoring and Education Committee from 1995-6, her group developed a mentoring handbook currently used by the NCI/JHU Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Fellowship program. She has served on the NIH Committee on Scientific Conduct and Ethics since 1988. *Dr. Thiele is serving in a personal capacity as an outside activity.