Our Leadership Team

Adam Gickling is Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at the Bridgewest Group. Adam oversees all aspects of corporate finance and operational strategy. Additionally, he is an active contributor to the operational success of the Bridgewest Group’s portfolio of companies. Through his business acumen and servant leadership style, he fuels a strong multi-talented organizational structure. With great resourcefulness and a can-do employee outlook, his operational teams (finance, accounting, legal, tax, human resource) empower entrepreneurs to do what they do best – transform a great idea into a powerful solution.

Adam joined Bridgewest in 2000 and has served as an operating CFO for several of the Group’s private equity portfolio companies. He brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the portfolio companies through his extensive first-hand operational M&A and capital raising experience. Adam received his BS in Commerce from the University of Virginia and his MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management.

Mark W. Womack is BioCina’s Chief Executive Officer, and in his first 9 months at the helm he led BioCina to a 500% YOY increase in sales and a 250% YOY increase in revenue. Following BioCina’s merger with NovaCina in January 2025 (with the combined company retaining the BioCina name), Mr. Womack created a powerful brand in biopharmaceutical and small molecule contract manufacturing, with an end-to-end offering, including clinical and commercial drug substance and sterile fill-finish of drug products. Prior to BioCina, as CEO of KBI Biopharma and Selexis SA, Mr. Womack led the company to a run rate of over a 30% YOY revenue increase in only 6 months and implemented a new commercial strategy to generate significantly greater deal size and profitability. Before that, as CEO and Managing Director of Stelis Biopharma, he led Stelis to build and qualify a state-of-the-art vaccine facility in record time, while also generating over $200M in new sales, and leading the development and implementation of Stelis’ operations infrastructure as a newly formed end-to-end Biologics CDMO.

Preceding Stelis, as the CBO for AGC Biologics, one of the world’s leading global biopharma CDMO’s, Mr. Womack led the organization to nearly a 300% increase in new sales in just two years. Over these two years, he drove the acquisition of many of the top Large Pharma companies into the AGC Biologics Client portfolio. Due to his extensive experience driving operational performance improvements, Mr. Womack led numerous major initiatives that achieved step changes in key indicators of AGC’s client program delivery success. Prior to the AGC Biologics board appointing him to the role of CBO, he led the development of their brand strategy for the newly formed company and then led the global integration of the three former CDMO’s that were merged to create AGC Biologics.

Prior to joining AGC Biologics, Mr. Womack served over 20 years as a management consulting industry leader and C-level client advisor, guiding many of the world’s renowned companies to achieve record highs in revenue and profit—while leaving behind a Fortune 500 list of stronger leaders. He joined the management consulting industry with Capgemini as a Principal and within three years became a leader of large-scale transformations of elite client companies, including a $20B post-merger integration within General Motors. In 2001, Mr. Womack became EVP, Head of Consulting Operations—Americas, for Celerant Consulting. He led the organization to deliver client benefits of as much as over $100 million per engagement and all-time highs in top and bottom-line growth for Celerant. In 2003, he founded his own boutique executive management consultancy, J.W. Webb Inc. For 11 years, J.W. Webb served elite clients such as Bayer HealthCare, CMC Biologics, Coors Brewing Company, and Whirlpool. Following that, Mr. Womack served as the COO for two international management consulting companies, delivering new sales generating as much as a 250% annual revenue increase.

Mr. Womack began his professional journey by leading a succession of U.S. Navy units to unprecedented results, including while serving as a combat center leader on a destroyer class ship. As Director of Training and Development for one of the world’s premier military technical training facilities, his command prepared many service personnel for key roles in the Desert Storm conflict. During his military career, he was honored with numerous of the Navy’s highest honors and awards. Mr. Womack has been quoted as a key source in The New York Times, Fast Company and many other major global media outlets and has been the keynote speaker on the topic of Achieving Disciplined Execution at numerous major corporate events around the world.

Tommy Broudy is a passionate biotech executive with a 20+ year track record building and growing companies in life science tools, diagnostics and therapeutics. As Operating Partner, he works with portfolio companies to create value, set strategy, build teams, establish partnerships, achieve milestones, and generate successful outcomes for all stakeholders.

Tommy was part of the leadership team for Bridgewest Group portfolio companies Molecular Response and BioDuro-Sundia and has rejoined at the investment group level. Most recently, Tommy was CEO of January Therapeutics, which develops nanoparticle technology for drug delivery. Prior, he served as Executive Vice President, Corporate Development & Marketing at BioDuro-Sundia, where he led the go to market strategy for the global CRO/CDMO. His team created a robust deal pipeline with multiple major partnerships in pharma and biotech. At Crown Bioscience, he led the US preclinical oncology operation up to the company’s IPO. He cofounded and served as CSO of Molecular Response, a patient-derived tumor modelling company, up to the company’s exit and strategic acquisition. At AltheaDx, he led the Business Development team to partner gene expression-based companion diagnostics for oncology therapeutics.

Tommy held postdoctoral appointments at Rockefeller University and Stanford University studying host/microbial genomics. He earned his PhD at Rockefeller in the Laboratory of Bacterial Pathogenesis and Immunology.

Rick Hancock was appointed to the Board of Directors as Executive Chairman in January 2022. Rick has worked in the Biotechnology Industry for over 35 years, including 20 years with various CDMOs in operational and executive roles.

Most recently, he served as Interim President and CEO at Avid Bioservices and prior to that, as President and CEO of Althea Technologies, Inc., a large molecule CDMO producing a wide range of biologics, plasmid DNA and parenteral products. In addition to Avid and Althea, Rick has held senior management positions at The Immune Response Corporation, and Hybritech Inc. (now part of Eli Lilly & Company) and is currently the Executive Chairman of Argonaut Manufacturing Services, Inc., a privately held CDMO serving the biotechnology and life sciences industries.

He also serves on the Board of Directors of Tempo Therapeutics, a privately held company, focused on tissue regeneration and vaccine technology, as well as Avid Biosciences, a public CDMO with expertise in Biologics and Viral Vector manufacturing services. Rick received a B.A. in Microbiology from Miami University.

Mike Cicio has worked in the Biotechnology Industry for over 30 years as a hands-on executive with experience with both world class innovators and CDMOs. Experienced in general management of clinical and commercial biotechnology business with a focus on operations. Mike has extensive experience in a variety of biotechnology platforms.

Mike received a BS in Biology from Fitchburg State University and worked initially with Genetics Institute, Cytel and Wyeth in manufacturing operations for these innovator companies. Mike joined Lonza, a global leader in CDMO in 2004 where he worked for 11 years. Starting as Director of Manufacturing and later VP of Operations/Site Manager in Portsmouth NH overseeing significant capital and customer expansion. Mike progressed into global operations as VP Pharma Operations with responsibility for manufacturing sites in the US, EU and Asia focused on strategic customer relationships, capital expansion, business plan development and contract negotiations.

Mike later held senior management positions at Baxalta/Shire as VP Recombinant Manufacturing and VP of Biologics External Supply and at Takeda as SVP Strategy and Business Excellence. In this role Mike worked to develop long range strategic plans including capital expansions, as well as business development of new product entities and product life cycle management. Mike is currently consulting with a focus in biotechnology site operational performance.