Shaye Mandle Appointed President and CEO of LifeScience Alley

Dale Wahlstrom has announced his retirement from LifeScience Alley (LSA), a life-sciences trade association based in Minneapolis, Minn., effective Aug. 15. He will step down from his role as president and CEO on May 1, providing support to the leadership transition and completing several strategic initiatives currently underway. The LSA board of directors has selected Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Shaye Mandle to lead the organization as president and CEO effective May 1.

“LifeScience Alley is grateful to Dale Wahlstrom for his strong and insightful leadership over the past 10 years,” said Steve Snyder, LSA board chair and president/chief operating officer of Neogen Corporation. “His focus on retaining and growing Minnesota’s leadership in the life sciences has brought a new level of recognition and distinction to LifeScience Alley and our region. As the organization celebrates its 30 year anniversary, we are excited about our future and look to Shaye to guide LifeScience Alley through the next phase of its growth as a globally respected trade association.”

Wahlstrom and Mandle have worked closely on key LSA initiatives, including the expansion of its public policy efforts and the creation of the Medical Device Innovation Consortium (MDIC), a public-private partnership between the medical device industry and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health.

“With Shaye’s unique background of public and private business leadership and policy work, and his current knowledge of how LifeScience Alley and its subsidiaries serve the industry and the region, we are pleased to have Shaye assume the role of president and CEO,” said Bill McCormack, board chair of The BioBusiness Alliance of Minnesota. “We are grateful for what has been accomplished under Dale’s leadership and eager to work in partnership with Shaye to move our organizations into the future.”

Wahlstrom has a distinguished record of leadership in the private and not-for-profit sectors. Prior to retiring from Medtronic in 2006, he founded The BioBusiness Alliance of Minnesota in 2004 and led the organization through a strategic alignment with LifeScience Alley in 2010, serving as the joint president and CEO since that time.

Wahlstrom’s is the creator of “Destination 2025,” the current 20-year road map for Minnesota’s bioscience industry, launching a full spectrum funding initiative to benefit startup companies, expanding international relationships with Minnesota’s life-science community and launching the Bio-Industrial Partnership to support the rapidly growing industry. In addition, Wahlstrom initiated several projects intended to improve the innovation and commercialization environment for the life-science community, while also seeking to improve the level of collaboration among industry, academia and the public sector. Among them are the launch and spin-out of the MDIC and the establishment of the Innovation Engine, an initiative to enhance collaboration among the innovation resources of the region for the benefit of entrepreneurs and the state.

Over the past decade, Wahlstrom has been  recognized for his contributions to Minnesota’s life-science industry. He has been honored several times by Twin Cities Business Magazine both as a “Bioscience Success Story” and as one of 200 “Minnesotans You Should Know.” In 2013, he was awarded the Engineering Manager of the Year Award by the American Society of Engineering Managers, as well as the Champion award from Minnesota Business as part of its 2013 Leaders in Health Care awards. In 2014, he was inducted as a fellow into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. Wahlstrom also serves on several boards.

Mandle joined LifeScience Alley in 2011 as vice president of government and affiliate relations. He was named executive vice president and chief operating officer in 2013, taking on the responsibility of aligning internal operations with organizational strategy, while overseeing advocacy efforts and key external relationships. During that time, he led the effort to re-engineer the organization’s operating structure to meet the evolving needs of its community.

Mandle has 20 years of experience in government, the private sector and academia. Prior to joining LSA, he served as the executive director of the FedEx Institute of Technology at the University of Memphis, where he launched and supervised the University Office of Technology Transfer and led the university’s corporate partnership, entrepreneurship and economic development programming. Mandle also led business development and government affairs for the Reconnaissance and Surveillance Operation of Science Applications International Corporation, a Fairfield, N.J.-based Fortune 500 company specializing in defense and homeland security technologies.

Mandle served as the chief executive of two industry and economic development organizations, the East-West Corporate Corridor Association and the Illinois Coalition. He has extensive policy and political experience, having managed state and federal political campaigns and having served on the policy staff of former U.S. House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar.