Harmonize Strategy Group™ Team

Dr. Sandra-Merkel DeJames is the Founder, President and CEO of Harmonize Strategy Group. 

Sandra has a keen interest in building and launching new businesses, leading transformational change and enabling growth.  She is experienced in working within public, private and venture-backed companies, as well as for-profit and non-profit ogranizations, and has founded multiple businesses.   She has international business experience across 5 continents and multiple industries, including basic and applied Life Sciences, Biotechnology, Data and Informatics.   With broad technical, commercial, operational and leadership experience, her background makes her uniquely positioned to lead early and mid - stage companies, and collaborate with large, established organizations looking to diversify technologically and commercially, through the development of robust strategy and insure alignment and integration across functions and operations to achieve successful execution.

Most recently, Sandra co-founded two companies in 2022, Acclivity Technologies Inc. (February 2022), a health technologies company, and Fieldhouse Holdings (August 2022), a software development, data informatics and AI company.    In 2019, Sandra founded K.I.D.S Community, Inc., to provide leadership, teamwork and life skills development for children in elementary through high school via engagement in community service (www.harmonizestrategy.com/kidscommunityinc).  In addition to founding and leading Harmonize Strategy Group in 2017, Sandra also founded (2007) and leads NC Elite Volleyball, Inc. (www.ncelitevb.org), an organization focused on "supporting, developing and providing opportunity for student athletes through training, competition, the development of life skills and service to the community."  With a full-time administrative staff, over 50 coaches, and more than 500 student athletes participating annually, NC Elite develops girls and young women from 10-18 years of age and prepares them for high school and collegiate competition.  Since its founding, NC Elite has helped student athletes earn over $12M in college scholarship and aid.  

Previously, Sandra served as Vice President of Innovation and Commercial Development, and member of the Executive Leadership Team, at Metabolon Inc. - the pioneer and leading health technology company in metabolomics. In this role, Sandra led the development of new technical and commercial Innovation platforms, and led the development of the company's Data and Informatics strategy, as well as the supporting R&D strategy. She also served as Vice President of Precision Medicine at Metabolon, where she led technical and commercial strategy, and the development and launch of 5 new clinical tools (MetaIMD^TM, MetaUDX^TM [adult], MetaUDX^TM [pediatric], MetaGA and MetaGP), including Metabolon's 1st Precision Medicine clinical tests, Meta IMD^TM, a comprehensive biochemical test for identification of more than 60 rare and inherited metabolic disorders in infants and children, and MetaUDX^TM, for assessing undiagnosed and difficult to diagnose disease.  Prior to Metabolon, Sandra was Head of Regional Development (Americas Region) for Novozymes, where she established the Americas Region Innovation and New Business Creation hubs, leading senior scientists, business developers and marketing managers in strategy development and identification, valuation, development and early stage commercialization of new technologies. While at Novozymes, she also had various roles driving external innovation with academic institutions, early stage companies and fortune 500s, technology and commercial platform development, technology licensing and partnering, and played a key role in developing a novel cell-based technology to address next-generation market needs.

Dr. Merkel-DeJames holds a BA in Psychology from UNC Charlotte, where she was a NCAA Division I scholarship athlete, earning 8 varsity letters in Volleyball and Track & Field, was 3x captain, 2x MVP, earned multiple All-Conference USA awards, and graduated with an NCAA ranking of 14th in career assists.  She also earned a PhD in Biology from UNC Charlotte, and completed her post-doctoral training at the UNC School of Medicine.  Sandra is a Certified Professional Coach and has earned numerous certificates in Fundraising, Social Entrepreneurship and Non-profit Strategy from the UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business.  She serves on various boards and advisory councils, including the National Advisory Board for the NCSU Institute for Emerging Issues, and is Board Chair for NC Elite Volleyball, Inc.  

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