Boomerang Ventures

INNOVATE

STUDIO

Boomerang Studio is a seamless approach to innovation.
Boomerang Studio specializes in helping early-stage, connected health tech companies to de-risk their ideas, launch successfully, and understand their commercial viability and exit path.

INVESTMENT CRITERIA.

What we look for in opportunities.
1
CONNECTED HEALTH TECHNOLOGY​
We identify, build, and resource connected health tech companies. We look for innovations in tech-enabled medical devices, healthcare informatics and improved care models.

2
EARLY-STAGE
GROWTH
We believe in capturing value early. At Boomerang Studio, we specialize in helping founders define and de-risk their ideas, execute a market strategy, and launch successfully.

3
COMMERCIAL
POTENTIAL
Understanding a new opportunity’s commercial viability is essential. We want to understand how a new technology will disrupt existing solutions, its addressable market size, and how it can scale.

4
CLEAR EXIT
STRATEGY
We look for opportunities with a clear exit path. We use our venture expertise, our network, and processes to understand potential acquirers and their target metrics and required milestones.

1
CONNECTED HEALTH TECHNOLOGY​
We identify, build, and resource connected health tech companies. We look for innovations in tech-enabled medical devices, healthcare informatics and improved care models.
2
EARLY-STAGE
GROWTH
We believe in capturing value early. At Boomerang Studio, we specialize in helping founders define and de-risk their ideas, execute a market strategy, and launch successfully.
3
COMMERCIAL
POTENTIAL
Understanding a new opportunity’s commercial viability is essential. We want to understand how a new technology will disrupt existing solutions, its addressable market size, and how it can scale.
4
CLEAR EXIT
STRATEGY
We look for opportunities with a clear exit path. We use our venture expertise, our network, and processes to understand potential acquirers and their target metrics and required milestones.

Great ideas come from anywhere.

WHO WE WORK WITH.

Boomerang Studio partners with innovators across industries to bring important healthcare ideas to life.

Entrepreneurs and First-time Founders

Boomerang Studio provides the expertise, resources, and support you need to make your healthcare ideas a reality. As your partner, you have access to dedicated experts in business operations that will help you commercialize and fundraise while you focus on developing your technology.

Healthcare Corporations

Corporations often find themselves torn between day-to-day operations and the need to innovate. Boomerang Studio can help. We provide the resources and structure you need to advance your own internally-developed inventions and bring your unrealized innovations to market.

Universities and Healthcare Systems

There’s incredible research happening within universities and health systems. We partner with the country’s finest academic and healthcare minds to shape your ideas into technology and provide the leadership, resources, and market strategy to help commercialize your intellectual property.

BOOMERANG LAUNCH SYSTEM.

Our process for getting your idea to market faster and smarter.

Backed by our venture fund and the support of our experienced team of business experts, the Boomerang Launch System helps bring your idea to market in a measured and measurable way.

Our integrated system supports founders with the systems, processes, and connections that are crucial to building a business quickly and effectively. We leverage proven strategies and data to:

EXPLORE OUR COMPANIES.

Meet our Studio Team.

With a strong background in healthcare and an unwavering drive to make a difference, our team comprises seasoned investors, entrepreneurs, and business managers. Together, we leverage our expertise to create meaningful transformations in patient experiences and outcomes.
  • ALLY THILL

    Project Leader

  • ARIEL MACTAVISH

    Studio Board Member

  • AUDREY BECKMAN

    Partner + Chief Innovation Officer

  • DICK ADERMAN

    Studio Director

  • ERIC BEIER, MD, MBA

    Partner + Chief Medical Officer

  • Gary L. Smith

    Executive-in-Residence (XiR)

  • Lisa Huse

    Executive-in-Residence (XiR)

  • MARK SCHINDEL

    Executive in Residence (XiR)

  • Phil Tran

    Entrepreneur-in-Residence

  • RAJ KAPOOR, MD, MBA

    Studio Board Member

  • Shane Harrington

    Venture Studio Intern

ALLY THILL

Project Leader

Ally Thill is a Project Leader at Boomerang Ventures, where she utilizes her mechanical engineering background to conduct technology and market assessments for potential projects as well as manage and collaborate on projects that are brought into the studio.

In design thinking sessions, Ally collaborates with clients and other Boomerang staff members to better understand opportunities being addressed and improve product designs.

Ally previously worked as an engineering intern at Retinal Care Inc., where she helped design a device to test an electronic sensor that gathered force and angle measurements on eyedrop bottles to improve medication compliance in glaucoma patients. Soon after, she joined Boomerang Ventures as an engineering intern during her last semester at the University of Notre Dame before becoming a full-time employee after graduation.

Ally earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in Bioengineering from the University of Notre Dame, having completed the Summer Engineering Program in London, England, where she studies engineering ethics and technical writing. She is a member of the Society of Women Engineers and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

ARIEL MACTAVISH

Studio Board Member

Ariel MacTavish, a Studio Board Member at Boomerang Ventures, is an innovative medical device professional with broad-based experience in several product categories in both strategic and transactional marketing and general management.

Ariel has served more than a decade in executive positions at Medtronic, a leading global healthcare technology company, and is currently President of Medtronic’s Respiratory Interventions Operating Unit. Her other positions at Medtronic include Vice President and General Manager of Respiratory Interventions and Vice President of Global Marketing for Respiratory Interventions.

Prior to joining Medtronic, Ariel held positions at Johnson & Johnson, including Director of Worldwide Marketing for Ortho Clinical Diagnostics and Wound Closure Group Product Director at Ethicon.

Ariel received a Bachelor of Science in History from Dartmouth College and an MBA in International Business at Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina.

AUDREY BECKMAN

Partner + Chief Innovation Officer

Audrey Beckman, Partner and Chief Innovation Officer at Boomerang Ventures since 2020, brings healthcare ideas to life by identifying new value drivers, de-risking key uncertainties, and providing necessary resources to first-time founders, universities, corporate clients, and healthcare systems.

Audrey is a seasoned executive, serving over 15 years in several executive roles with Zimmer Biomet Holdings Inc., one of the world’s top medical device companies.

After beginning her career at Zimmer Inc. in 1986 as a summer intern in Knee Development, she returned full-time to the company as a product development engineer. During her early career, Audrey developed and commercialized numerous knee implant and instrumentation systems, leading multi-functional technical and international surgeon teams in parallel with hands-on design activities. After helping develop and commercialize one of the world’s best-selling knee implant systems, Audrey began her management career in 1996, assuming the leadership of Zimmer’s Knee Development Engineering team.

Audrey held global leadership roles in product development, upstream marketing, medical training and education, and strategic quality initiatives. Excelling in the leadership of technical and nontechnical teams throughout her tenure, Audrey led international teams of engineers, marketing staff, and orthopedic surgeons. She was recognized for her skill at developing and executing complex strategies and initiatives.

Her leadership path continued through numerous restructurings and integrations to Vice President of Global Product Development at Zimmer Biomet Holdings, with an international team of more than 350 technical staff, including project office, prototype shop and packaging design. Recognized for leadership, portfolio management and product development process, she gained P&L experience as a leader of Zimmer’s largest global business unit in its initial years as a publicly-traded company. She also participated in corporate strategic and financial planning sessions for 15+ years, during which Zimmer developed and executed the industry’s leading minimally invasive surgery strategy for total hip and total knee replacement.

The orthopedic industry went through a significant change relative to relationships with surgeons who are both customers and consultants. Audrey was an essential leader of the Zimmer R&D leadership team as it developed new methods of valuing intellectual property, compensating consultants, and documenting the needs for consulting activities for internal approval and external oversight.

She rebuilt and led the Global Medical Education and Training team, improving educational effectiveness and aligning practices with AdvaMed guidelines. With an annual budget exceeding $70 million, the team grew from 30 to 100 people across more than 20 countries, training 28,000 healthcare professionals annually. Audrey also negotiated and collaborated with industry associations to develop and implement new third-party administered grant and donation practices for orthopedic professional education and to support needy patients worldwide.

Her last role with Zimmer Biomet Holdings was to lead a 1,300-person technical team formed to update and remediate quality system documentation for historical products developed or manufactured at four sites. In this role, she reported to the CEO, made quarterly presentations to the board of directors, and submitted quarterly updates to the FDA. Audrey led the senior leadership steering committee for the initiative and was the only executive to stay with the initiative for over two years, seeing the effort to completion in 2016.

Audrey began angel investing with VisionTech Partners in 2012, focusing her investments on start-up life science companies. After leaving Zimmer Biomet in 2016, she began advising start-ups on pitch decks, business opportunities and scaling activities. Audrey became the first independent board member for Board Management Software Inc., which primarily serves nonprofit organizations. She serves as a board member for Enlighten Mobility, a health tech start-up developing innovative, data-driven mobility care solutions.

Audrey has volunteered with Junior Achievement, teaching middle school through high school students about business. She also served on the board of directors for a nonprofit, Court Appointed Special Advocates of Kosciusko County in Warsaw, Indiana, chairing the governance committee after serving as president for a two-year term. Audrey currently resides in southwest Florida, sings in the Marco Island Community Chorus, and volunteers with community organizations.

Audrey earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA from Ball State University. She is an active participant on Notre Dame’s Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Industry Advisory Board, the College of Engineering Advisory Council to the President, and the Women in Engineering Advisory Council. She was instrumental in helping the College of Engineering receive multiyear research grants for pioneering research related to a new medical device technology.

DICK ADERMAN

Studio Director

Dick Aderman is a global leader who has built a career of broad experience across many types of businesses and is an Executive in Residence (XiR) at Boomerang Ventures and is President of The iTeam, a network of CEO think tanks in Indianapolis.

He has led corporate, private equity, and venture organizations with a mindset to innovate for growth. Dick has a successful track record of value creation with more than two decards of P&L responsibility. He is a leader, mentor, and multiplier with over 20 former direct reports currently serving as presidents or CEOs.

Dick has held senior-level global positions in healthcare IT, medical devices, clinical diagnostics, and healthcare services firms. He has raised $50M+ for private equity and venture-backed businesses. Dick currently serves as board chair for ImmunArray. This venture-backed, in-vitro diagnostics company develops tests based on microarray chip technology, and novel biomarkers focused on a suite of tests for acute brain injury.

Dick also serves on the Board of Advisors for the Haworth College of Business at Western Michigan University and is President of the board for Fountains of Hope, a faith-based nonprofit that provides water purification systems to villages and communities in parts of Africa, India, Central America, and the Caribbean.

Dick is a graduate of Western Michigan University, earning a Bachelor of Business Administration with concentrations in Marketing and Economics, as well as a Bachelor of Science with a concentration in Speech Communications and Psychology.

 

ERIC BEIER, MD, MBA

Partner + Chief Medical Officer

Eric Beier brings his extensive leadership experience as both a physician entrepreneur and investor to his position as Partner and Chief Medical Officer at Boomerang Ventures.

Eric, who joined Boomerang in 2020, has over 25 years of experience spearheading strategic collaborations, leading high-performance teams, and achieving targeted organizational results.

Previously, Eric was the startup Chief Executive Officer of two physician revenue cycle management companies, achieving successful exits from both. In his role as CEO of the firm he founded, MedOptima, he also helped launch and manage three physician practices.

Eric also was the startup CEO for Matrix-Bio Inc., a Purdue tech transfer cancer diagnostics company that raised over $1.3 million in angel capital and negotiated a seven-figure commercialization development agreement with Quest Diagnostics.

He has made over 25 angel and private equity investments and founded the Fort Wayne chapter of VisionTech Angels.

Early career positions included product line manager for cardiovascular diagnostics at Boehringer Mannheim Corporation (now part of Roche Diagnostics) and practicing as an emergency physician in northeast Indiana.

Eric graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Chemistry from Hanover College. He earned his medical degree from the Indiana University School of Medicine and an MBA from the University of Michigan.

Gary L. Smith

Executive-in-Residence (XiR)

Lisa Huse

Executive-in-Residence (XiR)

MARK SCHINDEL

Executive in Residence (XiR)

Mark Schindel joined Boomerang Ventures as an Executive in Residence (XiR), bringing 25+ years of experience spanning environmental, human and animal health industries, having held leadership positions, including C-level and Board roles in start-ups through larger corporations.

Mark has broad international experience in the medical device (Biomet, Zimmer, Tornier), pharmaceutical/biotech (Roche), life-science (Vanderbilt University Tech Transfer) and Government (US DOE/Battelle) sectors. Mark’s expertise spans marketing, sales, brand/product management, project management, R&D, clinical, and business development (M&A, licensing). Specific to medical devices, Mark has worked across craniomaxillofacial, pediatrics, plastic surgery, cardiothoracic/cardiovascular, hips, knees, shoulders, foot and ankle and regenerative medicine. Products have ranged from pre-operative technologies to implants (including biologics, synthetics and xenografts) and delivery technologies (robotics, patient-specific instruments, computer-assisted surgery, injectables, disposables, etc.).

As an entrepreneur, Mark served as CEO, Co-founder, and Board Member for Owl Manor Medical, LLC, an animal health biologics/medical device company with a focused regenerative medicine portfolio targeting equine and companion animal joint and soft tissue preservation. Following a successful Series A financing round, Owl Manor grew in revenues and profitability through its globally recognized portfolio. In addition to building a direct U.S./Canada sales channel, Owl Manor established a successful international business through a combination of distribution and direct sales across Europe, the Middle East, Australia, and Mexico. Founded in February 2015, Owl Manor was acquired on June 1, 2021, by Zoetis, the World’s Largest Animal Health company.

Mark holds an MBA from Vanderbilt University and a B.S. with honors from Purdue University.

Phil Tran

Entrepreneur-in-Residence

RAJ KAPOOR, MD, MBA

Studio Board Member

Rajat (Raj) Kapoor, a Studio Board Member at Boomerang Ventures, is an experienced physician leader, medical director, innovator, and educator at Indiana University Health and IU’s School of Medicine.

Raj currently serves as Respiratory Care Medical Director at IU Health, supervising the Respiratory Care Medical Department for the Academic Health Center in Indianapolis. He is also a Clinical Professor in the medical school’s Department of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine.

As a physician leader, Raj has led quality initiatives, protocol development, and the LEAN approach to continuous improvement to improve access and patient experience, physician burnout, and employee engagement.

Raj earned Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery Medicine degrees from Maulana Azad Medical College, a top medical education college in India. He also received an MBA in the Business of Medicine from IU’s Kelley School of Business. He is board certified in internal medicine, critical care medicine, and pulmonary medicine.

Shane Harrington

Venture Studio Intern

Each Studio engagement is unique and structured to the needs of the client.
Boomerang Ventures
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