Team

CEO

Tomer Kariv

Tomer is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Pontifax. He serves as an active board member of many of the fund’s portfolio companies, assuming a special responsibility for strategic planning. Among other positions, Tomer is a board member in Keros Therapeutics, Ocon Healthcare, ARMGO, Abcuro, and V-Wave. During the 10 years prior to establishing Pontifax, he held senior management positions at top Israeli financial institutions, playing a key role in investing in, nurturing and managing technology-driven startups. Tomer holds a B.A. in Economics from Harvard University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Ran Nussbaum

Ran is a managing partner and co-founder of The Pontifax Group. The fund runs more than 50 portfolio companies around the Globe. Ran’s work revolves around constant and active involvement in companies, providing them with strategic and business development oversight. In the past, Ran served on Kite pharma BOD (sold to Gilead), cCAM Therapeutics (sold to Merck), ArQule (ARQL) (sold to Merck), Emergence (sold to Lilly). He also chaired Ocon Medical, Nasvax, Spearhead and Biomedix. Currently, Ran sits on many of Pontifax’s portfolio companies including LB Pharma, Graviton, Indapta and Anaveon. Ran also serves as Keros’ chairman of the board.

Asaf Shinar

Asaf joined Pontifax in 2007, bringing over 15 years of experience managing finances and operations at Israeli and multi-national VC firms. Prior to joining Pontifax, Asaf was the CFO of Neurone Ventures Fund, which invested in all stages of development in the telecom, enterprise, and life sciences sectors. Asaf serves as a director in Otic Pharma, EyeYon Medical, Hairstetics, Ocon Healthcare, ForSight Vision6, and Sweetch. Asaf holds a B.A. in Accounting & Business Management and a CPA from the College of Management.

Ohad Hammer

Ohad joined Pontifax in 2009 and is involved in identifying as well as evaluating new investment opportunities. He obtained his M.S. in Biology from Tel-Aviv University and is currently serving as a director in Adcendo, Adcytherix, Agomab and Step Pharma.

Momi Karako

Momi joined Pontifax in 2018, bringing over 16 years of experience managing venture debt funds. Prior to joining Pontifax, Momi was a General Partner in Viola Credit, a leading Israeli venture debt fund, which initiated more than 100 debt transactions in mid to late-stage technology companies in various sectors. Momi served as a director in several technology startups and currently is an investment committee member at Shaked Partners Debt Fund and a director at Migdalor Credit Fund. Momi is a CPA, holds a B.A. in Accounting & Economics from the Tel-Aviv University, and an MBA from the New York Polytechnic University.

Lina Kaminski, PhD

Lina is a principal at Pontifax, involved in identifying and evaluating new investment opportunities. Prior to joining Pontifax, Lina was an equity research analyst at Canaccord Genuity and JonesTrading in New York, where she focused on rare disease and gene therapy biotech companies. Lina obtained her PhD from Ben Gurion University, studying glycosylation in Archaea, and completed four years of a postdoctoral fellowship at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, where she researched persistence mechanisms in Tuberculosis.