In a unanimous decision on Friday, May 1st, Sonavi Labs board of directors named Ellington West, Chief Executive Officer. Ms. West, also the Co-Founder of Sonavi Labs along with Ian McLane, played a crucial role in the formation and fundraising initiatives that will support the company’s first product launch, the Feelix platform.
As CEO, Ellington has pledged to make Sonavi Labs, a Johns Hopkins startup in its infancy stages, a global force in respiratory diagnostics and AI-enabled medical tools.
Ellington brings her experience and connections in the business and medical community of Baltimore to her role as CEO. She is focused on building the company into a diverse and formidable enterprise and has some very ambitious goals set forth for the MD startup, including entering numerous competitions, media features, and ultimately, a fundraising round to bring Feelix on to a global stage. In a statement, West said, “I know that because I am a woman of color, and we occupy so few leadership roles in the Tech industry, that I am going to stand out and we plan to execute the mission of the company flawlessly.”
The fledgling startup company is dominated by women, all of whom have a tremendous amount of experience in mechanical engineering, computer science, data governance and business development. As CEO, Ellington has pledged to maintain the pillars of the company that support diversity, equity, and access for all people as she pulls resources together to make the company successful. Putting a strong, eclectic team together was her first priority and something she learned from her father, Dr. James West.
Dr. West founded and runs West Labs Research Group at Johns Hopkins where the company’s core technology was developed. He has been critical in developing the Feelix product line alongside Dr. Mounya Elhilali, Ian McLane and Dimitra Emmanouilidou over the past 5 years with grant funding from NIH, NASA, the Gates Foundation and Johns Hopkins.
Ellington states that she had no problems jumping into this endeavor with full force once she realized that the technology had the potential to change the world of healthcare, and could save millions of lives. “My father’s first major invention, the electret microphone, changed the world. Almost every cellular phone in the world has his hand in it, or his ear rather, and if there’s a way that Sonavi Labs can impact billions the way the microphone has, then why wouldn’t I dive in? Family is everything to me, and everyone on our team is a part of my family.”