History

Mirepoix founders Joel de Jesus and Caroline Grossman first began working together in 2010. It was then that Joel became vice president of business development and marketing for Caroline's long-time client — Magellan Biosciences, a clinical-diagnostic company with three distinct business units.

Together, we developed the strategic messaging and crafted countless presentations and supplementary materials in support of the CEO to execute the growth strategy for this $70 million, VC-funded business.

The collaboration led quickly to the establishment of multiple joint ventures, filling gaps in the product line, ultimately enabling the sale of the company’s microbiology business unit to Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2011.

We also teamed up on public health advocacy, crisscrossing the country to highlight and combat regulatory and reimbursement barriers to point-of-care diagnostics. We met extraordinary people in all levels of government, academia, health plans, healthcare providers, educators, community advocates, and parents — helping rally them to the cause. Our efforts were very successful. The result: a 12 percent increase in point-of-care blood-lead testing in children (and a proportional increase of sales), despite severe cuts to the CDC’s childhood lead testing program.

...And we cooked along the way.

Caroline introduced Joel to her “leeks and vermouth make almost everything better” philosophy. Joel taught Caroline about the world of salty sauces from Asia Pacific, about the awesomeness of pork belly, and not to be afraid of fatty meats.

We were each good cooks on our own.

But together...

• An expanded menu,

• More-comprehensive and yet nuanced flavors,

• New takes on old favorites,

• Just better!

That’s why we founded and named our company Mirepoix LLC. We offer our clients a  richer, more-comprehensive set of consulting services when we combine the breadth of our skills, knowledge, and hands-on experience to get the job done.

In cooking, a mirepoix combines key ingredients, creating the base upon which to build more flavors. And that’s how we work with clients — helping to craft the foundation to build or evolve their companies, meet milestones, succeed, and grow.

Who we are:

PRINCIPAL

joel de jesus

Joel leads our commercial operations advisory initiatives. He has more than 20 years of experience in the global diagnostic, medical device, and large-scale manufacturing industries, working for companies ranging from small biotech startups like Nanosphere to multi-billion dollar corporations such as Baxter Healthcare and Motorola. He brings wide-ranging talent and experience in upstream and downstream marketing.

Joel has become a go-to expert in reimbursement, creating and implementing reimbursement strategies, with detailed project plans that include securing codes and coverage policies to optimize pricing and foster revenue growth.

As the lead of reimbursement and government relations at Immucor Inc., he successfully navigated though various agencies and its contractors to secure favorable coverage and payment for the company’s first FDA-approved molecular-diagnostic product. His leadership of cross-functional teams has produced a strong legacy of customer-centric product development, quality, and enterprise effectiveness. He was also chair of the Corporate Social Responsibility Committee.

Previously, Joel was VP of marketing and business development for Magellan Biosciences, where he led the company’s efforts to build relationships with Medicaid managed care organizations, public health and social service providers, and policy-makers. He established Magellan’s founding support for the National Minority Quality Forum’s LeadRiskIndex.com site, creating a first-ever tool enabling the public to research and better understand the risk for lead poisoning at ZIP-code-level granularity.

In 2017, Joel was appointed as a member of the AABB Coding and Reimbursement Committee. The committee is charged with addressing transfusion medicine and cellular therapies reimbursement issues.

PRINCIPAL

CAROLINE GROSSMAN

Caroline has spent her two-decade plus career in communications, investor relations and public health advocacy making complicated or technical subjects simple and accessible to broad audiences. She has done this in order to help numerous companies raise capital, go public, merge/be acquired and communicate with their various stakeholders — first, at Thermo Electron (now Thermo Fisher Scientific), where she was director of communication and public affairs — and then as a consultant for dozens of short- and long-term clients, such as LabCentral (the first coworking launchpad for science startups), and a number of its residents.

Dedicated to public service, Caroline works to strengthening communities through health, environment, housing, and education initiatives. Over the past decade as a public health advocate, she has worked with legislatures, other advocates, and departments of health in numerous states, resulting in tangible changes in clinical laboratory regulations, policies, and statutes. She served as the founding chair of the best practices committee for the Institute for Medicaid Innovation (IMI) — a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and policy organization dedicated to improving the lives of Medicaid enrollees through the development, implementation, and diffusion of innovative and evidence-based models of care that promote quality, value, equity, and the engagement of individuals, families, and communities.. She currently serves on IMI’s governing communications committee.

Caroline is chair of the Massachusetts Department of Health Clinical Laboratory Advisory Committee. She also chairs the quality improvement committee and is former chair of the nominating and development committees as a board member of Charles River Community Health, a federally qualified health center in the Boston area. Caroline has appeared regularly as a guest lecturer on such topics as PR, investor relations, and public health advocacy at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, the MassChallenge, among other venues. She is also a member of the Cambridge Art Association, as an associate artist, and has recently had pieces accepted in juried exhibitions in Cambridge and Boston. View her art here.

Education

TUFTS UNIVERSITY
Medford, Massachusetts
Bachelor’s degree, fine arts, magna cum laude

highlights

CPT Coding and Coverage Determination − First to achieve approval for a Proprietary Laboratory Analysis (PLA) code from the American Medical Association. Gained specific product coverage determinations for Medicare reimbursement

• Secured favorable Medicare coverage and payment for all FDA-approved molecular red cell antigen tests and various laboratory-developed tests

Specializes in Transitions During and After M&A − 

• Carve-out of Fenwal from Baxter

• Divestiture of Trek Diagnostic to ThermoFisher

• Post-acquisition integration of LifeCodes into Immucor Inc.

Certified green belt in Lean Six Sigma

Education

BENEDICTINE UNIVERSITY
Lisle, Illinois
Master’s of Business Administration

MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Bachelor’s degree, Biomedical Engineering

highlights

• Massachusetts Department of Health Clinical Laboratory Advisory Committee — A key driver in drafting a rewrite of the state's lab-licensing requirements and practice standards to better align with federal standards, best practices, and national norms through the first major overhaul of the regulations in nearly four decades

• New Jersey State Senate & General Assembly — Crafted language and lobbied for passage of bill, eliminated statutory restrictions on point-of-care testing through passage of “an act concerning bio-analytical and clinical laboratories and amending Chapter 86 of the NJ. P.L.1953, c.420 and P.L.1975, c.166”

• Maryland Clinical Laboratory Regulatory Reform − Delivered key testimony to General Assembly resulting in the establishment of Task Force to Study Point-of-Care Testing for Lead Poisoning; provided expert support to Department of Health and Mental Hygiene staff for Task Force and Lab Advisory Committee meetings leading ultimately to elimination of regulatory restrictions

• Healthy Rhode Island State Healthcare Innovation Plan – Active member of two work streams (1: Community Health Initiatives 2: Health Information, Technology and Measurement) for the Healthy Rhode Island State Healthcare Innovation Plan. Advised the state as it developed the road map to transform its healthcare system from a volume-based into a value-based system

• State of Connecticut General Assembly Official Citation – Awarded March 2012 in recognition of “exemplary health and educational advocacy” to raise awareness about the dangers of lead poisoning and its connection to minority health disparities and the achievement gap