Advisory Board

Chris Carroll

Full Rank Teaching Professor, Drexel University
Program Director, BSCST degree

Chris Carroll is the program director for Drexel’s BS degree in Computing and Security Technology housed in the College of Computing and Informatics. The BSCST is Drexel’s undergraduate degree program in Cybersecurity. Enrollment in the BSCST degree has increased over 40 % in the past 3 years under Chris’ guidance and the curriculum for the degree program has been designated as a Center of Academic Excellence by the National Security Agency in the US government.

Prior to teaching at Drexel full-time Professor Carroll worked in industry for 28 years holding positions related to managing infrastructure for Astra-Zeneca, Quest Diagnostics, Pfizer and financial company Chubb.  This included managing teams of engineers that designed and supported servers, storage, LAN’s, WAN’s, firewalled network configurations for Internet facing applications and business partner connections. His past two roles in industry were executive positions. At Pfizer he was the Director of Pfizer’s global enterprise network connecting locations in the US, Latin America, Europe and Asia. At Chubb Chris was a Vice President in charge of Chubb’s global servers and storage environments.

Chris received his Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from St. Michael’s College in Vermont, and his Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Drexel University. Chris’s interests include cloud computing, server virtualization, Cybersecurity curriculum, ethical hacking, cryptography and securing networks. He has a passion for educating students about IT and Cybersecurity to keep the applications and technologies used every day safe from malicious hackers.

Senior Vice President,& Chief Operating Officer

Life Sciences Pennsylvania

Karen joined Life Sciences Pennsylvania (previously known as Pennsylvania Bio), an independent non-profit trade association in 2009.  She is responsible for daily operations of the organization, including direct oversight of member services and programs, developing and executing strategic plans for membership growth and the development of programs in support of the association’s 850+ member companies.  In this position, she also initiates strategic alliances with industry leaders across the life science continuum including higher education, the investor community, start-up and large industry companies, and service providers to enhance and support the growth of the life science community in Pennsylvania.

Before entering the non-profit sector, Karen co-owned, operated and negotiated the successful sale of a franchise business. She managed business operations including membership recruitment and sales goals, financial management, performance training of employees and designing marketing programs.

Karen also enjoyed a successful career at Shared Medical Systems (now Cerner) with increasing roles of responsibility in technical support, training and project management.  During her sixteen year tenure, she was selected to lead a team of over twenty diverse technical personnel in the needs analysis, development, quality assurance and the successful rollout of an electronic management tool to more than 700 customers.  She created training classes, online demonstrations, designed exhibit booths and led presentations at national customer meetings.  Karen also managed the design, rollout and education of more than 200 employees on an electronic customer service monitoring tool for capturing support solutions.

Karen graduated from Eastern University with a B.A. in Organizational Leadership. She serves on the Advisory Board of The STEM Academy in Downingtown.  She also served on the executive planning committee for the Girls Exploring Tomorrow’s Technology (GETT) event sponsored by the Chester County Economic Development Council, the Keystone Innovation Zone (i2n) Board, Women in Bio (WIB – Philly) and organized Relay for Life teams for the American Cancer Society.  Previously, Karen served as an Executive Board Member of the Upper Merion Marlins Aquatic Club and chaired the Mother of Divine Providence School Membership Committee. 

Chester County Economic Development Council

Vice President for Grant Management & Workforce Development

Marybeth is currently Vice President for Grant Management and Workforce Development at the Chester County Economic Development Council in Exton, Pennsylvania. Her role with the Council is to provide oversight and direction for workforce development activities including 5 of the region’s high priority industry partnerships and grant/ contract management which includes approximately $20M in federal, state and local grants supporting the CCEDC’s development programs . She has over 26 years of professional experience in both the public and private sector having worked in economic development, corporate public/ community relations for an international pharmaceutical company, and education . Marybeth holds a masters degree from PSU in Instructional Systems Design with a focus on Human Resource Development and additional graduate work in Management and Educational Leadership. 

Chief Financial Officer
Syndax (NASDAQ; SNDX)

Keith Goldan has served as the Chief Financial Officer Syndax (NASDAQ: SNDX), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing an innovative pipeline of cancer therapies, since June 2022. Prior to joining Syndax, Mr. Goldan served as Chief Financial Officer of Optinose, a publicly-traded specialty pharmaceutical company, from January 2017 to June 2022, where he led the IPO and helped build the infrastructure to support the launch of XHANCE in the United States. Prior to Optinose, he served as Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President of Fibrocell, a publicly-traded cell and gene therapy company focused on the treatment of rare diseases. Mr. Goldan’s experience also includes Chief Financial Officer roles at NuPathe, PuriCore plc and Biosyn as well as financial roles at ViroPharma and KPMG. In these positions, Mr. Goldan led finance, accounting, IT, HR and corporate development teams and successfully raised capital through multiple IPOs, capital markets transactions and financing vehicles. Mr. Goldan received a B.S. in Finance from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Garrett Gulish, Regional Marketing Director, North America GE Gas Power

Dr. Robert Higgins

Bob Higgins retired in 2017 as the President and Technical Director of QUANTICS incorporated, a company specializing in mathematical modeling and software development.  During his career in mathematical modeling, Bob has worked on a wide variety of applications such as tracking Soviet submarines using sonar data, searching for lost objects, creating optimal strategies for treaty negotiations, developing a pre-war weapons stockpile plan for Operation Desert Storm, and overseeing the development of a suite of mathematical models that plan non-nuclear ordnance inventory objectives, ten-years ahead.  These models are used by the U.S. Department of Navy for ordnance stockpile planning.   

Bob has over twenty years experience at Drexel University teaching undergraduate and graduate level mathematics and has worked for publishers of mathematics textbooks (Prentice Hall, Macmillan, John Wiley and Sons, Academic Press, and harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich) as a manuscript editor, page proofer, solution set developer, and evaluator of manuscripts preceding the publisher's commitment to new authros.

Bob continues to network with his friends in the teaching profession,  from elementary school through graduate school,  on all matters related to the teaching of mathematics and the training of mathematicians.