Management Team

Tony Eisenhut, Managing Director and Co-Founder

Tony co-founded KensaGroup and has served as the Managing Director since inception. Tony is currently performing his required Entrepreneur Sabbatical Immersion Leave ('ESIL'). This leave is a unique component of KensaGroup's guiding principles. The ESIL requires each team member to take an active management role and assume operating responsibilities in a startup once every five years. As the KensaGroup partner currently on ESIL, Tony is serving as President of Rheonix, Inc., a developer and manufacturer of microfluidic systems for the molecular diagnostics industry.

Tony has launched twelve university-based start-ups since KensaGroup's inception. Previously, he served as the CEO of a mid-market manufacturing company as well as Vice President of a multi-billion dollar international retailer. Tony sits on the boards of NovaSterilis, Inc., MedHesives, Inc., Prendismo, LLC, Novomer Inc., and Rheonix, Inc. Tony has served as an advisor to NextGen in conjunction with New York's Task Force on Economic Development and Emerging Industries, and a board member to the Center for Life Science Enterprise (New York State Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research Center for Advanced Technology at Cornell) and serves on the Board of Directors of Cayuga Medical Center.

Tony earned his B.S. degree from Cornell University.

Bruce Ganem, Ph.D., Director, Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder

Dr. Ganem, Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder of KensaGroup, is the Franz and Elisabeth Roessler Professor of Chemistry and the J. Thomas Clark Professor of Entrepreneurship at Cornell University. Dr. Ganem received his B.A. degree in chemistry from Harvard College and his Ph.D in organic chemistry from Columbia University. After completing postdoctoral work at Stanford, he joined the Cornell faculty in 1974, serving as department chairman from 1993 to 1997 and again in 2001.

A synthetic organic chemist by training, Dr. Ganem has broad scientific research interests ranging from organic and analytical chemistry to biochemistry and molecular medicine, including medicinal chemistry, structure-based drug design, protein engineering, and biotechnology. His current research focuses on new chemical processes known as multicomponent reactions, which have important applications to drug discovery and development. Dr. Ganem has authored over 240 scientific papers, and holds five patents. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the 1999 Chemical Manufacturers Association National Catalyst Award and the 2007 American Chemical Society Award for Creative Invention.

As a scientist-entrepreneur, Dr. Ganem has founded or helped start several biopharmaceutical and technology companies in the past fifteen years, including LeukoSite, ArQule, Natural Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Taktix, KensaGroup, Gene Network Sciences, NovaSterilis, Medhesives, North Sea Resins, and Novomer.

Eric Eisenhut, Managing Director

Eric returned to KensaGroup in July 2010 as a Managing Director. From 2007 to 2010, Eric was Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Kionix, Inc., a semiconductor company developing and supplying inertial sensors to the consumer, industrial and automotive electronics markets. Kionix's market leadership resulted in it being acquired by Rohm Corp, Ltd., in Q4 2009. From 2002-2006, Eric was a KensaGroup Entrepreneur in Residence and served as President and Chief Executive Officer of MedHesives, a KensaGroup portfolio company, where he helped develop and expand the firm's novel photopolymerizable resins used in coatings and adhesives technologies.

From 1998 to 2002, he was Vice President of Sales for Atmel Corporation’s Wireless and Microcontrollers Division. Prior to Atmel, Eric held sales management, business development, finance and engineering positions with TEMIC Semiconductor and IBM Corp.

Eric earned his BSEE from Manhattan College.

Peter Hessney, Director of Consulting and Advisory Services

Peter joined KensaGroup in October 2011 to expand KensaGroup’s consulting and advisory services. As an accomplished international business executive with over 25 years of management and consulting experience, Peter has worked with many Fortune 500 global product development clients advising them on how to commercialize the latest developed technologies into new products.

Representative of his international career in technology centric organizations, Peter was a Vice President of Motorola where he managed a worldwide technical sales and application engineering team within the semiconductor organization. Over the last 15 years, Peter has been involved with assisting and transforming entrepreneurial entities into rapidly growing and successful businesses. He has demonstrated a solid track record of successes in creating shareholder value leading to positive transactions and liquidation events.

Peter holds a bachelors degree from Rochester Institute of Technology and an MBA from the William E. Simon Graduate School of Management at the University of Rochester.

Eugene Yarussi, Director

Gene served as CEO of Emerson Power Transmission (EPT) between 1996 and 2006, capping a 41-year career with the Company. EPT specializes in mechanical power transmission and the production of bearings, couplings, chains and other components. Under Gene's leadership EPT made six strategic acquisitions, which were positioned to operate as one cohesive organization. EPT is an operating division of Emerson, a $20 billion NYSE-listed corporation, and has 3800 employees, 14 operating locations and $650 million in revenue.

Gene began his career at EPT in sales and marketing, and was promoted to President in 1989. He served on the company's operating board in the United States, and boards in Spain and Mexico, as well as joint ventures in Japan and China. He graduated from Drexel University with a BS in Commerce/Engineering.