CEO Today Healthcare Awards

43 www.ceotodaymagazine.com CEO Today Healthcare Awards 2018 USA ABOUT FRANCIS DESOUZA Francis deSouza was appointed President & CEO of Illumina in 2016 and is responsible for directing all aspects of company strategy, planning, and operations. He initially joined the company as President in 2013, and led Illumina’s business units and core functions responsible for envisioning, developing and producing the company’s products. Previously, deSouza served as President of Products and Services at Symantec Corporation, where he was responsible for driving the vision for the company’s market-leading portfolio and served in a variety of executive roles. He joined Symantec through the acquisition of IMlogic, where he was co-founder and CEO. Prior to joining IMlogic, deSouza was co-founder and CEO of Flash Communications, a provider of corporate instant messaging that was acquired by Microsoft. Following the acquisition, he joined Microsoft and led the team responsible for the development of the company’s enterprise real-time collaboration offerings. Currently, he is a member of the board of directors for The Walt Disney Company. Francis deSouza received a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. FRANCIS DESOUZA President & CEO of Illumina FIRM PROFILE We are beginning to unlock the power of the genome – to transform healthcare and beyond As a startup, Illumina aspired to transform human health. Our initial products enabled researchers to explore DNA at an entirely new scale, helping them create the first map of gene variations associated with health, disease, and drug response. Every breakthrough opened up a new world, and showed us how much further there is to go. While the rate of progress is accelerating exponentially, we are only beginning to understand the clinical significance of the genome. What causes a cancer cell to mutate? What is the origin of a puzzling disease? Is it possible to prevent the next outbreak? Or safeguard the world’s food supply? These are just a few of the challenges that inspire us to push the boundaries of our imagination. Today we are a global leader in genomics – an industry at the intersection of biology and technology. At the most fundamental level, we enable our customers to read and understand genetic variations. We strive to make our solutions increasingly simple, more accessible, and always reliable. As a result, discoveries that were unimaginable even a few years ago are now becoming routine – and are making their way into patient treatment. We now have the ability to sequence at an unprecedented scale. Collectively, this will give us a much deeper understanding of genetics than ever before. We will begin to truly unlock the power of the genome. These advances will trigger a fundamental shift in healthcare and beyond. Medicine will continue to become more preventive and more precise. We will be healthier, longer. We have only just begun. “Prior to joining IMlogic, deSouza was co-founder and CEO of Flash Communications, a provider of corporate instant messaging that was acquired by Microsoft”