Leadership Corner
Markus Lusser, President
Markus joined Leica Microsystems on July 1st 2015 as President. Markus comes from Sciex where he served as the Vice President of Global Sales and Customer Support since 2011.
Prior to joining Danaher, Markus was responsible for global sales and service at Carestream leading a global team of over 2000 associates. Prior to that, Markus spent 21 years with Siemens Healthcare with half his tenure based in the United States and the other half based in Germany. While at Siemens, he held a variety of both technical and commercial roles with increasing responsibility.
Markus holds a degree in Engineering in Electronics from HTBLA in Innsbruck, Austria.
Melanie Hammerschmidt-Broman, Chief Financial Officer
Melanie Hammerschmidt-Broman joined Leica Microsystems in April 2008 as Manager Consolidation & Controlling Leica Microsystems & Leica Biosystems, before she was promoted to Director Financial Planning and Analysis Leica Microsystems in April 2012. During the past 3 years Melanie was instrumental in setting up the Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) team and taking Finance Business Partnering to the next level.
Before joining Leica, Melanie was Head of Finance at a coating materials manufacturer, and prior to that she gained broad finance experience in banking and semiconductor manufacturing companies in both, Germany and the US.
Melanie holds a Diploma from Academy for Communication and Languages in Stuttgart and a Finance degree from the University of Central Florida, Orlando.
Fedja Bobanovic, Senior Vice President Global Commercial Operations
As of January 2016 Fedja joined Leica Microsystems as Vice President Life Sciences. Fedja joins Leica from Cambridge Epigenetix LTD where he held the position of the CEO for the past 2 years. Prior to that Fedja worked for over 2 years for the Danaher company Sciex where he successfully developed the Sales and Customer Service teams within EMEA and India. Prior to Danaher, Fedja worked in various General Manager, BU and Sales positions at PerkinElmer, located in Italy, India, US and UK.
He started his career as Research Scientist in Cambridge at the Institute of Animal Physiology where he gained a deep understanding of the advanced microscopy space as he purchased and used 5 Confocal Microscopes. Fedja holds a Degree in Engineering, and a PhD in Cellular Physiology.
Beate Berns, Vice President Global Human Resources
Beate Berns joined Leica as Vice President Global Human Resources in March 2017. She brings significant expertise across the full spectrum of HR, change management and HR consulting from working in leading global IT/professional services companies for over 20 years.
Beate joins us from Avanade, where she has performed a variety of HR leadership roles, most recently as Vice President, Human Resources Europe, during the past 4 years. Beate started her career with Accenture, where she was responsible for all people-related aspects of outsourcing, shared services and M&A engagements.
Beate holds a degree in Business Management from the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz as well as additional professional qualifications in leadership coaching, training and languages.
James O’Brien, Vice President Life Sciences
James O’Brien joined Leica Microsystems in 2019 as Vice President Applied Microscopy and took over the Life Science Research business unit in June 2020.
James joined us from Tecan where over 16 years he progressed his career from a field-based applications role, service leadership, sales operations to leadership of a variety of Tecan’s end customer businesses. Most recently James served as Vice President of Tecan’s Labwerx business. While working in global roles, James has lived in the US and Europe.
James’ educational background is in biology and his career began at Johns Hopkins University in genomic research. He also holds an MBA from Kenan-Flagler Business School with Honors.
Andreas Hecker, Vice President Global Research & Development
Andreas Hecker joined Leica Microsystems in March 2004 as an Optic Design Engineer. He worked as a Senior Project Manager for the sites Wetzlar and Mannheim before he became Head of Software Development for the Life Science Division in 2009.
Between 2011–2013, he has also served as R&D Director Digital Pathology at Leica Biosystems and as Global Director Software Development for Leica Microsystems. In August 2014 he took over the position as Vice President Global Research & Development.
Andreas has completed his PhD in Physics at the University of Bochum in Germany. After having earned his doctorate in the field of Laser Physics and Spectroscopy, he was heading a small team for Laser Scanning Microscopy for IR at the university.
Maxim Mamin, Vice President Medical Division
Maxim Mamin joined Leica in October 2016 as Vice President Medical Division.
Maxim comes from Siemens Healthcare where he worked in a number of leadership positions and countries for the last 18 years including Russia, Germany, Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia. Most recently, Maxim served as Managing Director for the commercial organization of Siemens Healthcare in Malaysia with full P&L responsibility for the entire portfolio spanning from Imaging to Lab Diagnostics.
Maxim's background is in Medicine and he holds two Medical Degrees from Ludwig-Maximilians University and Moscow Medical Academy. Additionally, he has two MBA degrees from the University of California in Los Angeles and Singapore University.
Marc Orellou, Vice President Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance (RA/QA)
Marc Orellou joined Leica Microsystems in December 2015 as Vice President Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance (RA/QA).
Marc brings broad RA/QA knowledge and experience from the Medical Device industry. He comes from LivaNova where he held a number of global Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance leadership roles with increasing responsibilities over the past 8 years. Marc served most recently as VP Quality Assurance for the Cardiac Rhythm Management business unit (implantable pacemakers and defibrillators) of LivaNova. Prior to this, Marc began his career with GE Healthcare in various Regulatory Affairs, Quality / Six Sigma, and R&D roles in France (X-ray Mammography) and in the US (Computed Tomography and Surgical Navigation).
Marc holds a master’s degree in Engineering from Ecole Centrale de Lyon, France.
Darin Stell, Senior VP Global Commercial Operations
Darin Stell joins Leica Microsystems as Senior VP Global Commercial Operations on September 1st, 2020.
Darin joins us from Hach, where he currently serves as their VP Global Sales & DBS. Darin has built his career at Hach over the past 17 years with increasing sales & service responsibilities starting in the UK, then Europe, and since 2017 with responsibility for Sales for North America and Europe with revenues of 800M USD and a team of 1050 associates. Before Hach, he held progressive sales roles at Camlab and Thermo Electron.
Studying Physical Chemistry and with a post-graduate diploma In Marketing, he started his career in the laboratory, progressing to Scientific Officer before moving into the commercial environment more than 25 years ago.
Bruno Rossi, Vice President Global Marketing and DBS
Bruno joined Leica Microsystems as the Vice President, Global Marketing and DBS in 2018.
Bruno comes from Merck KGaA, Life Science, where he was most recently Vice President, Global Commercial Head for both the Diagnostic segment and the Tissue Diagnostic portfolio. Bruno brings with him over 20 years of international experience and in-depth knowledge of the academic, diagnostic, pharmaceutical, and chemical markets for research, development, quality control, and manufacturing applications covering immunoassays, immunohistochemistry, genomics, flow cytometry, filtration, microbiology, water purification, and service products. Bruno has built his impressive career spanning general management, marketing, sales, service, OEM, product management, and R&D leadership roles within both customer-centric and/or product-centric organizations. He started his career at Millipore, which then became part of Merck KGaA, a few years ago.
Bruno holds a Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering.
Markus Limberger, Vice President Global Operations
Markus Limberger joined Leica Microsystems on September 1st 2018 from Leica Camera AG where he held the position of Chief Operating Officer (COO) for the past 7 years.
In his role he was responsible for R&D, Quality Management, Procurement and Customer Service, and he successfully ran global Operations with impressive manufacturing sites in Wetzlar and Portugal. Markus is a very experienced leader in every angle of Optics and Digital Imaging as he built the foundation to his successful career at Rodenstock/ Qioptiq. Markus was heading global Operations focusing on the end-markets Medical Devices, Industrial applications and Semiconductor before he moved to Wetzlar in 2007 where he became managing director of a leading supplier in the optical industry and later joined Leica Camera as their COO.
Markus holds a master degree in business engineering from the University of Karlsruhe.
Mark Wetzel, Vice President Global Service
Mark Wetzel joined Leica in November 2018 as Vice President, Global Service.
In his role, Mark is responsible for our Service go-to-market strategy and offerings, delivery models and resource allocation needs, standardizing and improving our after sales processes globally, and get Service to the next level of excellence and customer experience. Mark is an experienced business leader who joined Leica from SCIEX, which he joined in 2009 and where he held the role of Vice President, Global DBS. He was responsible for the effective deployment of DBS for SCIEX and Phenomenex in all functions and regions and for driving results through continuous improvement across the business. Mark has led the successful transitions of both the Phenomenex and IDBS businesses to Danaher.
Besides his DBS expertise, Mark brings a strong business management, operations and Information Technology background within and prior to his career at Danaher.