John Crowley

Birthday: 7 April 1967, Englewood, New Jersey, USA

Birth Name: John Francis Crowley

John Francis Crowley is an American biotechnology executive and entrepreneur. He is best known as the founder of several biotech companies devoted to curing genetic diseases. Crowley was raised in Ber ...Show More

John Francis Crowley is an American biotechnology executive and entrepreneur. He is best known as the founder of several biotech companies devoted to curing genetic diseases. Crowley was raised in Bergen County, New Jersey, the son of an Englewood police officer who died in an accident on duty when Crowley was eight years old. He attended Bergen Catholic High School in Oradell, New Jersey, graduating with the class of 1985. Crowley attended the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland from 1986-1987. He went on to earn a B.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. He entered the University of Notre Dame Law School in 1989 and married his wife Aileen in 1990. After receiving his J.D. degree from Notre Dame in 1992, he worked as a litigation associate in the Health Care Practice Group of the Indianapolis-based law firm of Bingham Summers Welsh & Spilman. He went on to receive an M.B.A. degree from Harvard Business School in 1997 and then worked for a management consulting firm in San Francisco. In 1998, two of Crowley's children, Megan and Patrick, were diagnosed with a severe neuromuscular disorder, Glycogen storage disease type II, also called Pompe's disease. In the face of the children's deteriorating health, the family moved to Princeton, New Jersey to be close to doctors specializing in the disease. Crowley worked at Bristol-Myers Squibb, where he held a number of management positions. Frustrated with the slow pace of research on Pompe's disease, Crowley left Bristol-Myers Squibb in March 2000, and took a position as CEO of Novazyme Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology research company located in Oklahoma City founded by Dr.William Canfield, that was conducting research on a new experimental treatment for the disease. Crowley later described himself in a magazine profile as "much better suited to the entrepreneurial experience." In 2001, Novazyme was acquired by Genzyme Corporation, then the world's third largest biotechnology company, under Crowley's initiative. Crowley was in charge of Genzyme's global Pompe program, the largest R&D effort in the company's history, from September 2001 until December 2002. Genzyme's work eventually bore fruit and in January 2003, Megan and Patrick Crowley received the enzyme replacement therapy for Pompe disease developed by Genzyme. Crowley credits the experimental trial with saving his children's lives. The acquisition of Novazyme by Genzyme, and Crowley's fight to cure Pompe's Disease, was documented in the Harvard Business School Case Study, Novazyme: A Father's Love. Crowley went on to become President and CEO of Orexigen Therapeutics in 2003. In January 2005, he was named the President and CEO of Amicus Therapeutics, based in Cranbury, New Jersey. He also serves in the United States Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer. He completed a six-month tour of active duty at the Center for Naval Intelligence in Virginia in 2007. Hide