Our Team

Amit Etkin, M.D., Ph.D. founded Alto in 2019, is our President and Chief Executive Officer and serves as Chair of our board of directors. Prior to founding Alto, Dr. Etkin was a tenured Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, where he held multiple leading roles. During his more than a decade on faculty, Dr. Etkin ran a well-funded lab with over 30 students, post-doctoral researchers, and staff, and was jointly appointed at the Palo Alto Veteran Affairs hospital. Dr. Etkin has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific articles in leading basic science and clinical journals and ranks in the top 0.1% of researchers by citations worldwide. His exceptional research contributions during his tenure at Stanford led to Dr. Etkin being awarded the National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award, the most competitive and prestigious NIH grant, and the first in history to be awarded in clinical psychiatry.

Michael Hanley joined Alto as our Chief Operating Officer in May 2024. He brings more than 25 years of leadership experience in life sciences, the majority of which focused on CNS-related disorders. Mike’s career spans across the product life cycle from early-stage new product planning and portfolio strategy to product launch and brand management. Prior to Alto, Mike served as Chief Commercial Officer and Chief Business Officer at Aeglea BioTherapeutics, General Manager at Horizon Therapeutics, and Head of US Sales for Lundbeck’s psychiatry business unit, where he was responsible for managing TRINTELLIX (vortioxetine) and ABILIFY MAINTENA (aripiprazole) and preparing for the launch of REXULTI (brexpiprazole). Throughout his career, Mike has worked in and held leadership roles in a wide range of neuropsychiatric indications, including major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, sleep disorders, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and ALS. Mike received a BBA in Marketing from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Erin McQuade has served as our General Counsel and Chief Administrative Officer since February 2023. From September 2019 to October 2022, she served as the Vice President, Legal at Levo Therapeutics, a biotechnology company. Previously, she served as Vice President, Legal and Deputy General Counsel at Assertio Therapeutics, Inc., a pharmaceutical company, from June 2018 to September 2019. She served as the Assistant General Counsel, Corporate, Securities and Compliance and Assistant Secretary at Mead Johnson Nutrition Company, or MJNC, from March 2014 to March 2018 and as Senior Counsel, Corporate, Securities and Compliance at MJNC from May 2012 to March 2014. Earlier in her career, Ms. McQuade served as Senior Corporate Counsel, SEC & Compliance, at Hyatt Hotels Corporation from January 2010 to April 2012 and as Vice President, Associate General Counsel at SPSS Inc. from June 2005 to December 2009. Ms. McQuade received a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center and a B.A. in Public Policy from Duke University.

Jessica Powell has served as our Chief Development Officer since September 2023, having served as our Vice President, Clinical Operations from June 2022 to September 2023. Prior to joining us, Ms. Powell served in roles of increasing responsibility at Alkahest, Inc., a biotechnology company, from March 2018 to June 2022, most recently serving as its Vice President, Clinical Operations. Before joining Alkahest, Ms. Powell was a Senior Clinical Project Manager at Bioclinica, a contract research organization, from April 2015 to December 2017, where she led Phase 3 Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s clinical trials. From August 2014 to April 2015, Ms. Powell served as a Project Manager at SRI International with a focus on IND enabling preclinical studies. Earlier in her career, Ms. Powell managed a large neuroscience lab from April 2001 to September 2013 at Stanford University with funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Ms. Powell received a B.A. in Biology from Texas A&M University.

Adam Savitz, M.D., Ph.D. has served as our Chief Medical Officer since July 2021. Before joining us, Dr. Savitz served in various roles at Janssen Research and Development, LLC, a pharmaceutical company, from May 2011 to June 2021, most recently serving as Senior Director Clinical Research from July 2017 to June 2021. From 2020 to 2021, he served as Clinical Strategy Leader for the Mood Disorder Disease Area Stronghold. Dr. Savitz completed his psychiatry training and served on the staff at Massachusetts General Hospital. He served as a full-time faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine, including as unit chief of an inpatient psychiatry unit, from 2001 until 2011. He received an M.D. and Ph.D. in Molecular Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles and a B.S./M.S. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University.

Nicholas Smith has served as our Chief Financial Officer since November 2022 and has served as our Chief Business Officer since September 2021. Mr. Smith also served as a member of our board of directors from July 2023 through October 2023. Prior to joining us, Mr. Smith served in various roles at Aptinyx Inc., a CNS-focused biopharmaceutical company, from March 2017 until September 2021, including Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Development from March 2021 to September 2021, Senior Director, Corporate Development and Investor Relations from March 2019 to March 2021, and Director, Corporate Development from March 2017 to March 2019. Mr. Smith received a B.A. in Accounting and Finance from North Central College.

Melissa Berman has served as our Vice President, Finance and Accounting since January 2023. Prior to joining us, Ms. Berman served as Chief Financial Officer of Levo Therapeutics, a biotechnology company, from January 2022 to October 2022 and as its Vice President, Finance from May 2019 to January 2022. Previously, she served as Vice President, Controller at Assertio Therapeutics, Inc., a pharmaceutical company, from June 2018 to May 2019. She served as Controller at AveXis, Inc., a biotechnology company, from March to June 2018. She served as the Assistant Controller, Accounting and Consolidation at Mead Johnson Nutrition Company from March 2015 to March 2018 and as Associate Director, Investor Relations and Technical Accounting from August 2013 to March 2015. Earlier in her career, Ms. Berman served as Director of Financial Reporting at Hyatt Hotels Corporation from June 2010 to August 2013 and worked in the audit practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers from August 2001 to June 2010. Ms. Berman received an M.S. and a B.A. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Akash Datwani, Ph.D. has served as our Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Alliances since April 2024. Prior to joining Alto, Akash served as Director of External Innovation at Biogen where he established the External Portfolio Innovation Unit in the SF Bay Area in 2019, contributing to key strategic initiatives, partnerships and M&A.  He brings more than 22 years of experience in drug discovery, data sciences, clinical development, external innovation, and corporate development.  Akash has held leadership roles across highly innovative biopharma companies; including Elan, Genentech/Roche, and Biogen, academia (Harvard & Stanford), and non-profit organizations. His expertise spans early-stage target discovery, preclinical to clinical development, biomarker studies, and fostering collaborations with academic and industry partners. He has contributed to the approval of a number of novel medicines, including Ocrevus, and remains committed to leveraging cutting-edge technologies and precision medicine to advance human health.  Akash earned a B.S from Georgetown University, doctorate from LSU Health Sciences Center and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School.

Michelle Moran has served as our Vice President of Quality Assurance since May 2024. Michelle joins Alto with over 30 years of drug development experience across many disciplines including GCP/GMP QA, Clinical Operations, Procurement, and Project Management. Michelle has held various leadership positions with increasing responsibilities across many pharmaceutical companies including Teva, GSK, Jansen, and a division of BMS.  Her inspection experience ranges from biologics to ultra-rare drugs across a multitude of Regulatory Agencies: FDA, Health Canada, EMA, MHRA, Israeli Ministry of Health, and PDMA.  Michelle most recently led her own quality consulting company in which she acted as the Head of Quality for organizations in the rare disease space.  Previously Michelle served as the SVP of Quality for Anavex and BridgeBio from 2019 to 2023. Michelle holds a BS from the University of Pittsburgh.

Bruce Morimoto, PhD, brings over 25 years of industry experience in leading project teams in the development of innovative medicines, providing guidance in the design and execution of manufacturing, nonclinical, clinical and regulatory strategies with a therapeutic focus on CNS indications including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and frontotemporal dementias. Previously, Bruce held leadership roles at Cerecin, Alkahest, Celerion and Allon Therapeutics, and works closely as a scientific advisor to the Michael J. Fox Foundation, chairing one of their scientific review panels. Bruce started his career on the faculty in the Chemistry Department at Purdue University, where his independent research focused on neuronal signal transduction. Bruce earned his doctorate in biochemistry from UCLA and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California Berkeley.

Patricio O’Donnell, M.D., Ph.D., has served as our Vice President of Translational Medicine since June 2024. Patricio brings over 30 years of experience in translational medicine approaches in industry and academia. He combines an outstanding academic career in Neuroscience with experience in drug discovery and development for neuropsychiatric indications. Before joining Alto, Patricio was in various leadership roles at Sage Therapeutics, where he built a Translational Medicine team, Takeda, and Pfizer. Prior to his roles in industry, Dr. O’Donnell had a distinguished academic career as a Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Dr. O’Donnell grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and earned his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Buenos Aires. Patricio is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2010 National Alliance for Schizophrenia and Depression Distinguished Investigator Award. He is a fellow at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) and has chaired several scientific conferences, including the 2009 Gordon Conference on Catecholamines and the Winter Conference on Brain Research in 2012 and 2013. Dr. O’Donnell has authored over 125 scientific papers and has served on the Editorial Boards of multiple scientific journals, including the Journal of Neuroscience, Neuropsychopharmacology, The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, Schizophrenia Bulletin, and the Journal of Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics. Patricio has also been a member of various advisory committees of the National Institutes of Health.

Tom Insel, MD, is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist. He has served as the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, a component of the National Institutes of Health that is committed to research of mental disorders. Prior to his appointment at the NIMH, Tom was a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Director of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience at Emory University School of Medicine. He also served as Director of the Center for Autism Research and is a member of the scientific advisory board at the Autism Science Foundation. Tom is also a member of the National Academy of Medicine and has received numerous national and international awards, including honorary degrees in the U.S. and in Europe. Tom is a co-founder of MindstrongHealth and led a team at Verily Life Sciences to develop technology for mental health care.

Madhukar H. Trivedi, MD, is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UT Southwestern Medical Center. He serves as Chief of the Division of Mood Disorders and is the founding Director of the Center for Depression Research and Clinical Care, where he holds the Betty Jo Hay Distinguished Chair in Mental Health and the Julie K. Hersh Chair for Depression Research and Clinical Care. Madhukar earned his medical degree at Baroda Medical College in India, where he also completed a residency in psychiatry. He also performed a second residency in psychiatry at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, and received advanced training in functional brain imaging and psychopharmacology through a research fellowship at UT Southwestern.

Alan Schatzberg, MD is a Director at the Stanford Mood Disorders Center and Professor of psychiatry at the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. He was also Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Stanford from 1991 to 2010. Alan previously served as the President of the American College of Neuropsychology, the Society of Biological Psychiatry, and the American Psychiatric Association. He is also a member of the National Academy of Medicine. Alan has received multiple national and international awards and honors and is a member of the Bio-X and Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. Alan earned his medical degree from Harvard University, before completing his medical training at the New York University School of Medicine. He is board certified psychiatrist and holds a fellowship granted by Harvard Medical School.

Fei-Fei Li, PhD, is the inaugural Sequoia Professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University, and Co-Director of Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute. Fei-Fei is a member of the National Academies of Engineering and of Medicine. She served as the Director of Stanford’s AI Lab from 2013 to 2018. During her sabbatical from Stanford from January 2017 to September 2018, she was Vice President at Google and served as Chief Scientist of AI/ML at Google Cloud. Fei-Fei obtained her B.A. degree in physics from Princeton in 1999 with High Honors, and her PhD degree in electrical engineering from California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 2005. She joined Stanford in 2009 as an assistant professor. Prior to that, she was on faculty at Princeton University and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Quentin Huys, PhD, is the Clinical Professor of Computational Psychiatry at University College London (UCL) where he also serves as the deputy director of the Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research. He completed his undergraduate training at Cambridge University before joining the MB/PhD program at UCL. While obtaining his PhD in computational neuroscience and machine learning the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, he successfully applied computational techniques to the study of mental illness. Dr. Huys completed his residency in psychiatry at the Hospital of Psychiatry, University of Zurich and was a research fellow at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich).

Amit Etkin, M.D., Ph.D. founded Alto in 2019, is our President and Chief Executive Officer and serves as Chair of our board of directors. Prior to founding Alto, Dr. Etkin was a tenured Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, where he held multiple leading roles. During his more than a decade on faculty, Dr. Etkin ran a well-funded lab with over 30 students, post-doctoral researchers, and staff, and was jointly appointed at the Palo Alto Veteran Affairs hospital. Dr. Etkin has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific articles in leading basic science and clinical journals and ranks in the top 0.1% of researchers by citations worldwide. His exceptional research contributions during his tenure at Stanford led to Dr. Etkin being awarded the National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award, the most competitive and prestigious NIH grant, and the first in history to be awarded in clinical psychiatry.

Gwill York has served as a member of our board of directors since September 2021. From 1994 to 2017, Ms. York served as Founding Managing Director of Lighthouse Capital Partners, a venture financing firm she co-founded. Ms. York currently serves as a member of the board of directors of Sofina SA, a Belgian investment company listed on Euronext Brussels, as well as a member of the boards of trustees of various medical and non-profit organizations. Ms. York received an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.A. in Urban and Developing Economics from Harvard University.

Po Yu (Jeff) Chen, Ph.D. has served as a member of our board of directors since April 2022. Since April 2018, Dr. Chen has served as Managing Director at Alkeon Capital Management, an investment advisory company, where he also serves as the Head of Healthcare. Dr. Chen previously served as Vice President of Biotechnology Equity Research at Cowen and Company LLC, an investment banking firm, from March 2014 to March 2018. Dr. Chen received a Ph.D. in Cellular Molecular Medicine and Neuroscience from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a B.S. in Life Science – Chemistry from Penn State University.

Christopher Nixon Cox has served as a member of our board of directors since April 2022. Since December 2021, Mr. Cox has served as Chief Executive Officer of Lightswitch Capital, a private equity firm. In addition, Mr. Cox has served as Chief Executive Officer of Argali Carbon Corporation, a carbon offset developer, since November 2022 and of BioSource Feed Corporation since October 2023. From December 2018 until March 2020, Mr. Cox served as Vice Chairman of Brightsphere, Inc, a publicly traded asset manager. Mr. Cox has also served as the Managing Partner and co-founder of OC Global Partners LLC, a financial services company, since October 2006. Previously, Mr. Cox served as a corporate associate at the law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP from 2004 to 2006. Mr. Cox received a J.D. from the New York University School of Law, a certificate in Finance from New York University Stern School and a B.A. in Politics from Princeton University.

Andrew Dreyfus has served as a member of our board of directors since October 2023. From August 2005 to December 2022, Mr. Dreyfus served in roles of increasing responsibility at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, a health insurance company, most recently serving as President and Chief Executive Officer from September 2010 to December 2022. Mr. Dreyfus has served as a member of the board of directors of Ironwood Pharmaceutics, Inc., a pharmaceutical company, since April 2016, and serves on numerous boards and advisory boards for non-profit organizations. Mr. Dreyfus received a B.A. in English from Connecticut College.

Husseini Manji, M.D., has been appointed as a member of our board of directors effective immediately prior to the execution of the underwriting agreement related to Alto's IPO. Since May 2023, Dr. Manji has served as Co-Chair of the U.K Government Mental Health Mission. Dr. Manji has served as a professor at the University of Oxford since June 2021 and has served as a visiting professor at Duke University School of Medicine since July 2006. Dr. Manji previously served as Global Head, Science for Minds at Johnson & Johnson, a pharmaceutical company, from July 2020 to July 2022. Dr. Manji served as Global Therapeutic Head, Neuroscience at the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, a pharmaceutical company, from June 2008 to July 2020. Dr. Manji received an M.D. from the University of British Columbia and a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of British Columbia. Dr. Manji received the designation of Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

Maha Radhakrishnan, M.D., recently served as group senior vice president and chief medical officer of Biogen, responsible for the worldwide medical function, until March 2024. Previously, Dr. Radhakrishnan was senior vice president and global head of medical, primary care business unit at Sanofi, a global biopharmaceutical company focused on human health. At Sanofi, she led the medical function providing the medical strategy for the diabetes and cardiovascular products and programs in development. Prior, she held several leadership roles at Bioverativ Inc., Bristol Myers Squibb, United Health Group, and Cephalon. Dr. Radhakrishnan received her M.D. in internal medicine with honors from the People’s Friendship University in Moscow, Russia in 1995, as well as a master's degree in Russian language. Dr. Radhakrishnan has extensive experience across therapeutic areas in overseeing the external scientific engagement strategy and real-world data generation with academic institutions, top key opinion leaders, patient advocacy groups, payers, and regulators. She received her M.D. in internal medicine with honors from the People’s Friendship University in Moscow, Russia in 1995, as well as a master's degree in Russian language. She is also a certified Russian language instructor and interpreter.