Commitment to Excellence with Peter Farmakis
Peter Farmakis
On Sept 7, 2018, Dr. John Alverdy and The University of Chicago founded Covira Surgical – a biotech company focused on novel therapeutic alternatives to prevent postoperative (surgical) infections. In Feb of 2020, Peter Farmakis joined Covira as the Chief Executive Officer, during a time when our work to prevent infections has never been more important. Peter is an accomplished executive with diversified leadership experiences in the life science industry including; biotech/pharma, medical devices, and diagnostics/molecular diagnostics. Throughout his career Peter has held multiple commercial leadership positions with two large industry leading diversified life science organizations Johnson & Johnson and Abbott Laboratories, and five privately held early-stage/start-up companies including Covira Surgical, VitaHEAT Medical, OraPharma, Unimed Pharmaceuticals, and DynaSplint Systems. Peter completed the General Management Executive Development Program from Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management. Peter attained his MBA in Marketing and Strategic Management from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and his BA in Pre-Physical Therapy and Psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Peter's board experience includes Co-Chairman of the Board for Covira Surgical, CEO Leadership on the Ops Team for Smart Health Catalyst, and multiple Boards of Director roles including VitaHEAT Medical, Three Squared, and Health Industry Supply Chain Institute.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
- How Peter learned vicariously through others success and failures
- What the best piece of advice was he received from one of his mentors
- How Peter has gone about creating a comfortable environment for his teams
- Why having the ability to admit what you don’t know is so important
- Why a turnaround job was more pressure at times than a startup
- How Peter learned the hard way that when you experience a high level of success people will begin to take shots at you
- How Peter stays grounded by focusing on fitness, friends & family, and fun
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