NIRI has appointed Derek Cole, vice president of IR and corporate communications at ARCA biopharma, as its chair of the board of directors for 2012.
He will succeed Douglas Wilburne, vice president of IR at Textron, who steps down at the end of the year.
Cole joins NIRI, the world’s largest IR association with more than 3,500 members, as it embarks on a new strategic plan called ‘OneNIRI 2012-2015’, the details of which are due to be set out at the beginning of December.
‘I look forward to working with the highly talented staff and board of directors along with the entire NIRI community to move our recent strategic organization review into the execution phase for the benefit of all NIRI stakeholders,’ says Cole in a statement.
Cole’s long career in IR has been spent in the biotech sector. Prior to ARCA biopharma, he spent close to three years at Allos Therapeutics as vice president of IR.
Before that, he spent five years at Myogen in IR and corporate communications. During his tenure at Myogen, the company went from private to public through an IPO, before being acquired in 2006 by Gilead Sciences.
Cole sits on the board of directors of the Colorado BioScience Association and is a past president of NIRI’s Rocky Mountain chapter.
