Veteran clinical research leader Melissa Holbrook has found her next permanent role. The trained nurse practitioner has assumed the chief operating officer mantle at NextStage Clinical Research, her first time taking a seat in the C-suite.
Holbrook, based in North Carolina, will oversee NextStage’s operations as the company seeks to grow its network of 16 research sites, according to a July 23 release.
“Her experience with research makes her uniquely qualified to scale our integrated site network model," Ned Schwing, NextStage’s co-founder and executive chairman, said in the release.
Holbrook’s most recent full-time role was as executive vice president of operations at Velocity Clinical Research, where she worked for four and a half years. Before that, she spent about 15 years in various director and vice president roles at IQVIA, dating back to before Quintiles merged with IMS to become QuintilesIMS and, later, IQVIA.
Holbrook earned her master’s in nursing from Duke University and previously practiced at Duke University Medical Center, according to her LinkedIn page.
“I have spent my career at the intersection of care and research,” Holbrook said in the release. “I am excited to join a team that believes patients deserve research that fits into their lives, not outside of them.”
NextStage’s mission is to embed research teams directly into patient care settings, according to the release. The outfit’s investigators and patient populations span therapeutic indications like pain, neurology, cardiovascular disease and dermatology, among others, according to NextStage’s website.