John Aballi Named CEO and President at Exagen

Exagen Inc. has appointed John Aballi as CEO and president. He replaces Ron Rocca, who is stepping down after 11 years and spearheading the company’s IPO. 
 
Exagen’s board has appointed Aballi as CEO, president, and a board member. Aballi is an executive with a broad range of experience in growth-stage companies in the clinical diagnostics arena. Most recently he served as senior vice president and general manager of Urology and CLIA COO, at Veracyte Inc. 
 
“I am delighted that John has agreed to lead the next phase of growth at Exagen,” Board Chair Brian Birk said  “He is a leader who excels at operations, is financially and business savvy and is recognized for optimizing productivity and profitability.  John’s experience and insight will enable him to lead Exagen to continued growth and success in the future. The board would like to thank Ron Rocca for his tenure at Exagen, and his many contributions to the success of the company, especially for his success in establishing the company as a leader in the U.S. rheumatology diagnostics field.”
 
With 15 years of diagnostic industry experience, Aballi is known for transforming commercial and laboratory operations and has broad experience building efficient clinical diagnostics operations. In his previous role at Veracyte, he was responsible for a 245-member business unit and led a team that grew the urology unit revenue to more than $120 million annually. He also led the implementation of CAP standards across the San Francisco and Austin labs and managed Veracyte’s CLIA laboratory operations. In his prior position, Aballi was chief operating officer at Decipher Biosciences, where he was in charge of revenue growth from $12.6 million in 2018 to $39 million in 2020. Aballi was a key part of the executive team that helped take Decipher from a struggling company to being sold to Veracyte for $600 million in early 2021. He had P&L responsibility for all aspects of operations including sales, quality management, medical operations, customer service, IT, assay development, billing, managed care, internal expansion, and laboratory operations.  Aballi was also responsible for oversight of laboratory operations at Molecular Stethoscope and Genoptix in various senior roles.
 
“I’m very excited to be joining Exagen as CEO,” Aballi said. “The company has developed a leadership position in one of the largest fields of medicine. Having spent the past 15 years developing and commercializing diagnostics in cancer, I’m looking forward to bringing that same successful approach to inflammatory and rheumatologic diseases with the incredible team at Exagen.”

Aballi was a board member of PFS Genomics in San Diego, a molecular diagnostic company specializing in proprietary signature development in breast cancer, which was acquired by Exact Sciences in 2021. He earned an MBA from California Baptist University and dual degrees from UC San Diego in biochemistry and cell biology and economics.  
 
Exagen provides autoimmune diagnostic, prognostic, and monitoring testing solutions. Exagen is a patient focused, discovery driven organization built on the success of AVISE testing and is investing in its product pipeline to support patients throughout their autoimmune diagnosis and treatment journeys. Exagen is located in San Diego County with clinical and research and development laboratories in Vista, Calif.