Board of Directors | Blue Water Vaccines, Inc.

Joseph Hernandez founded Blue Water Vaccines, Inc. in October 2018 and has been the Chief Executive Officer & Executive Chairman of the Company since inception. He has a background in company creation, early stage technology development, as well as private and public market financing. He brings leadership to the team, backed by a strong educational foundation in biology, medicine, molecular genetics, microbiology, epidemiology, marketing, and finance. Over the course of his career, he has founded or led eight entrepreneurial companies in cutting edge areas of healthcare and pharmaceuticals. After years of building his career at Merck & Co. (NYSE:MRK) from December 1998 to January 2001 and Digene from 2005 to 2009 (acquired by Qiagen (NYSE:QGEN)) from 2005 to 2009, Mr. Hernandez founded and became the President and CEO of Innovative Biosensors from 2004 to 2009. Later, Mr. Hernandez served as the Founder and Chairman of Microlin Bio Inc. from August 2013 to January 2017 and as Chairman of the Board of Ember Therapeutics (OTCMKTS:EMBT) from April 2014 to January 2019. He was also the Chairman of Sydys Corporation from May 2016 to January 2019. In 2018, Mr. Hernandez founded Blue Water Vaccines, an early stage biotechnology company focused on manufacturing a universal influenza vaccine in partnership with the University of Oxford in England. He has served as Chairman of Blue Water Vaccines, Inc. since 2019. Most recently, in January 2020, he founded and in May 2020 sold Noachis Terra, Inc. (acquired by Oragenics (NYSE:OGEN)) a company developing a vaccine for COVID-19. From May, 2020 to September 2021, Mr. Hernandez was also the chairman and chief executive officer of Blue Water Acquisition Corp. (“BWAC”), a special purpose acquisition company which completed its initial public offering in December 2020. On September 9, 2021, Blue Water Acquisition Corp. consummated a business combination with Clarus Therapeutics Holdings Inc. (OTCPink:CRXT) (“Clarus”). Mr. Hernandez served as a director of the post-combination entity, Clarus, until August 2022. He completed his undergraduate studies in Neuroscience, M.Sc. in Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, M.B.A. all at the University of Florida and is completing his M.Sc. in Chronic Disease Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Yale University.

Vuk Jeremić, one of our Directors since November 2022, brings decades of experience in operational and strategy advisement on a global scale for both private and public companies. Currently, Mr. Jeremić is the President of the Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development (CIRSD), a global public policy think-tank, and Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly magazine “Horizons – Journal of International Relations and Sustainable Development.” Since 2013, Mr. Jeremić has operated Vuk Jeremić ent Consulting Agency Belgrade, through which he currently serves as a senior advisor to a leading global private equity firm and to one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges. He also serves on the Advisory Board of the NYSE-listed technology special purpose acquisition company, Adit Edtech Acquisition Corp. (ADEX:U). In addition, he has lectured around the world at major universities, think-tanks, and institutes, as well as published opinion pieces in leading outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, and Le Monde. Prior to his experience in company advisement, Mr. Jeremić held multiple key positions in global public policy development nationally and internationally. In 2007, he chaired the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers and, from 2007 to 2012, he served as Serbia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. In June 2012, Mr. Jeremić was directly elected by the majority of world’s nations to be the President of the 67th session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly. During his term in office, he played a leading role in steering the UN towards the establishment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Mr. Jeremić was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2013 and appointed to the Leadership Council of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UN SDSN) in 2014. Mr. Jeremić served as the President of the Serbian Tennis Federation from 2011 to 2015. Mr. Jeremić holds a bachelor’s degree in Theoretical and Experimental Physics from Cambridge University and a master’s degree in Public Administration in International Development from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Timothy R. Ramdeen has nearly a decade of experience in private equity and hedge fund investing, capital markets, and company formation.

Since June 2022, Mr. Ramdeen has been founder and managing partner of Dharma Capital Advisors, an investment and advisory firm focused on early-stage private and public companies. From March 2021 to March 2022, Mr. Ramdeen was co-founder, chief investment officer, and portfolio manager at Sixth Borough Capital Management, a multi-stage, event-driven hedge fund focused on both private and public equities.

Since 2022, Mr. Ramdeen has been the co-founder of Amplexd Therapeutics, which is a women’s health/biotechnology company focused on providing low-cost, effective, safe and accessible treatments for early cervical and HPV-related cancers worldwide. Mr. Ramdeen also serves as a corporate advisor/board member to multiple early-stage companies and investment funds.

Previously, Mr. Ramdeen was the fifth hire at Altium Capital Management (“Altium”), a healthcare-focused investment firm, where from July 2019 to March 2021 he served as the sole investment analyst on the private capital markets/special situations desk (privately-negotiated financings, direct investments, event-driven long/short, and private to public investments in micro and small-cap companies). During his tenure at Altium, Mr. Ramdeen was instrumental in co-creating the firm’s SPAC and reverse merger investment efforts and establishing extensive relationships with sell-side constituents, buy-side counterparts, and hundreds of private and publicly traded companies across biotechnology, therapeutics, healthcare services, medical devices and medtech.

Prior to Altium, from September 2017 to July 2019, Mr. Ramdeen served as the sole investment analyst at Brio Capital Management, a New York-based event-driven/special situations hedge fund focused on small-cap equities, where he invested as a generalist. In addition to spearheading all investments on behalf of the firm, Mr. Ramdeen assumed increasing degrees of responsibility and oversight including general fund/business operations, investor relations, capital raising/business development and compliance. Before entering public markets investing, Prior to 2017, Mr. Ramdeen also spent time in private equity working for both a private New York‑based family office and Focus Financial Partners, a publicly traded holding company.

Mr. Ramdeen received his B.S. in Biology from Temple University, where he conducted scientific research across neurology, oncology, and developmental biology. In addition, Mr. Ramdeen earned his MBA in Finance from NYU Stern School of Business.

James Sapirstein, one of our directors since February 2022, has over 35 years of experience leading, founding, growing, and selling healthcare companies, specifically in the pharmaceutical space. Mr. Sapirstein is currently the President, CEO and Chairman of First Wave BioPharma, Inc. (Nasdaq: FWBI), where he has been since October 2019. His career began in sales at Eli Lilly, eventually rising to Director of International Marketing at Bristol Myers Squibb from July 1996 to June 2000, and later led the launch of Viread (tenofovir) at Gilead Sciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: GILD), where he served as Global Marketing Lead from June 2020 to June 2002. From November 2006 to January 2011, he served as founding CEO of Tobira Therapeutics (Nasdaq: TBRA), then a private company, and later acquired by Allergan (NYSE: AGN). Since then, he has served as CEO of Alliqua Biomedical (Nasdaq: ALQA) from September 2012 to February 2014 and CEO of Contravir Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: CTRV) from March 2014 to October 2018. He has been part of almost two dozen drug product launches and specifically either led or has been a key member of several HIV product launches into different new classes of therapeutics at the time. Additionally, Mr. Sapirstein has held board positions on ZyVersa Therapeitics, Inc. (Nasdaq: ZVSA) since January 2023 and Enochian Biosciences (Nasdaq: ENOB) since April 2018. He previously served as a director of Marizyme (OTCMKTS:MRZM) (Executive Chairman) from December 2018 to June 2021, Leading Biosciences from 2016 to 2021, BioNJ, an association of biopharma industries in New Jersey, from February 2017 to February 2019, RespireRX (OTCBB:RSPI) from April 2014 to January 2020, NanoViricides Inc. (NYSE: NNVC) from November 2018 to January 2020, and BWAC from December 2020 until its business combination with Clarus in September 2021. He is also a Board Director for BIO, the leading Biopharma Industries Organization promoting public policy and networking in the healthcare space, where he sits on both the Health Section and Emerging Companies Section Governing Boards. Mr. Sapirstein received a B.S. in Pharmacy from Rutgers University and his MBA from Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Simon Tarsh, one of our Directors since August 2022, has more than 40 years of financial experience, working in both the UK and the USA. He has recently retired from Deloitte Consulting LLP, where he was a Senior Managing Director in the Finance and Enterprise Performance Practice, where he had served global clients since 2007. He led a growing global practice focused around Operational Transformation, including supporting Carve Out transactions, joint ventures and hybrid structures, both in the US and in international locations, such as India, China, Eastern Europe and Latin America. He supported high growth companies with their finance operations as they globalized, and was able to advise them on their expansion, while balancing growth with appropriate controls. Prior to moving to the United States in 2007, Mr. Tarsh’s consulting career began with PA Consulting Group, London in 1988, where he was elected as a Partner in 1997, and he built ISG’s business process outsourcing advisory practice in Europe between 2001 and 2006. Mr. Tarsh’s early career was in finance, working with Marathon Oil and Dow Chemical, and during this period, he qualified as a Chartered Accountant. Mr. Tarsh received a Bachelor of Science undergraduate degree in Business and Administration from the University of Salford, Manchester, UK in 1981, and an MBA from City University Business School, London, UK in 1988. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (1984), which is considered as a CPA equivalent.