Leadership Team

As president and chief executive officer, Tom Ross uses his extensive leadership experience to create a culture at Grand River Aseptic Manufacturing (“GRAM”) where employees maximize their performance by following GRAM’s core values of quality, service, collaboration, and courage.

Under Tom’s direction, GRAM has become a reputable contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) supporting global pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and life science organizations. GRAM has evolved into a highly successful organization of 450 team members across six Grand Rapids, Michigan facilities. Tom has been named Entrepreneur Of The Year® by Ernst & Young and Newsmaker of the Year by Crain’s Grand Rapids Business (formerly Grand Rapids Business Journal), and he serves on the MichBio board of directors.

Tom is a proud Michigan State University alumnus and previously held senior executive roles at a large, publicly held pharmaceutical company and at leading smaller entrepreneurial organizations. He spent eight years at Perrigo Company, serving on the executive committee and leading the financial team. He has been an entrepreneur for over 20 years, starting up several companies, and before joining GRAM, he served as managing director at DWH, LLC, a consulting company focused on helping emerging businesses maximize value.

Bernie King has over 30 years of industry experience and is GRAM’s Chief Operating Officer.

Bernie has served in numerous leadership capacities with some of the world’s leading vaccine and pharmaceutical organizations including Sanofi Pasteur, Wyeth / Pfizer, and Merck & Co.

While at Sanofi Pasteur, he had the opportunity to lead several key arms of the business such as global supply chain management, industrial operations, international business, product management and formulation, filling and packaging operations for adult and pediatric vaccines. Bernie joined Wyeth / Pfizer to head its manufacturing operations for all animal health plants in the United States. At Merck & Co, Bernie led the global supply chain team initially for its animal health business and subsequently for its newly created operating unit dedicated to immuno-oncology, anti-infectives, biosimilars and women’s health.

Bernie holds a B.S. in Production & Operations Management from the University of Scranton and an M.B.A. in International Business from Marywood University. He completed executive education programs at Columbia University and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He holds multiple APICS Certifications and is an APICS Fellow with the Association for Supply Chain Management.

Nick Bykerk, chief financial officer, applies his vast leadership experience to develop and execute strategic growth initiatives.

Part of GRAM since 2012, Nick held positions overseeing supply chain, finance, and business development before his current role leading the finance and accounting departments. Nick maintains a critical role in the executive team leading the company through several years of high growth and substantial industry partnerships.

Before joining GRAM, Nick worked at Plante & Moran where he focused on manufacturing and service companies and served in technical, management, and advisory positions. After leaving public accounting, he joined a local manufacturing company as a member of the executive management team to run the finance and accounting departments.

Nick is a CPA and graduated from Calvin College with a degree in public accounting.

John Wichelt brings 25 years of experience at pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device industries to his role as vice president of client pharmaceutical services. With executive experience at companies regulated by the FDA, John has specific expertise in validation, quality assurance, business development and project management.

Prior to joining GRAM in June of 2010, he was the Midwest regional manager for ProPharma Group, a validation, quality assurance and remediation services company. During his career at GRAM, John has held various roles of increasing responsibility including director of quality assurance and regulatory affairs. John led GRAM’s large-scale fill-finish facility expansion project that was completed in June 2020. The facility was awarded FOYA’s 2021 Special Recognition Award for Operational Agility: COVID-19 Impact.  He is a graduate of Colorado Technical University.

Steve Nole serves as vice president of operations, responsible for all manufacturing and packaging operations and facility engineering. He has more than 18 years of industry experience with biologics and small molecule aseptic manufacturing, lyophilization, technical transfer, new facility startup and contract manufacturing organization management. 

Prior to joining GRAM in 2015, Steve held roles of increasing responsibility at Pfizer’s pharmaceutical sciences biotherapeutics group in technology transfer and scale-up of biosimilars. Most recently at Pfizer, Steve was senior manager of liquid dose manufacturing at its Andover facility, working with engineering and validation to commission and start up a new sterile fill/finish facility. In his career, he also worked at Anika Therapeutics and King Pharmaceuticals. Steve graduated from Oakland University with a degree in biology. 

Laura Malagon is our vice president of quality and regulatory and a member of Grand River Aseptic Manufacturing’s executive leadership team. She is responsible for GRAM’s quality assurance, quality systems and compliance, laboratory services including microbiology and stability, continuous improvement, and regulatory affairs functions. Her extensive pharmaceutical, biotech, drug delivery, and global business operations expertise is invaluable, as she has more than three decades of proficiency and knowledge of quality assurance principles, compliance, and multinational regulatory standards in the cGMP FDA-regulated healthcare manufacturing industry.

Before joining GRAM, Laura was the vice president of quality assurance and learning and development at OrganaBio, LLC, where she was responsible for building the quality team, developing the quality system, and maintaining regulatory licensures for all sites. Before that, she served as vice president of compliance and regulatory at CutisPharma, where she grew and developed the quality department. Laura created a new inspection process, led the company through its first successful PAI, and received its first FDA product approval.

Laura is a patient advocate, passionate about quality, and has a dynamic, diverse background that allows her to assist large and small life science companies. She graduated from Barry University with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, and she is a certified quality manager through the American Society for Quality and ISO 13485 certified through the BSI group.

Dave Powell brings over 28 years of industry experience in aseptic manufacturing, drug delivery, technical transfer, project management, marketing and business development to his role as GRAM’s vice president, business development. Prior to joining GRAM, Dave held various leadership roles within the CDMO organizations at Abbott, Hospira, and Pfizer.

Most recently, Dave led the Development Services and Commercial Accounts organizations of the Pfizer CentreOne contract development and manufacturing business, including accountability for customer management. Over his career, Dave has led global teams of Business Development and Program Management professionals. Part of the GRAM team since 2019, Dave earned a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MBA from Marquette University.