Executive Team
Little Sparrows Technologies was launched in 2013 by Donna Brezinski, MD, and Gary Gilbert, MD, both doctors affiliated with Harvard Medical School.
Today, we are a team of doctors, engineers, scientists, and designers dedicated to developing innovative solutions for our world's smallest humans.
Donna Brezinski
Founder, CEO
Donna graduated from Yale Medical School, completed a pediatrics residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital, and received her training in neonatology at the Neonatal-Perinatal Fellowship Program. She is the inventor of the bili-hut™, an innovation drawn from years of clinical experience taking care of newborns to provide more effective, developmentally sensitive and family-centered treatment of neonatal jaundice.
Donna Brezinski, MD
Chief Executive Officer
Gary Gilbert
Founder, COO
Gary is Chief of Hematology & Oncology at VA Boston Healthcare Center and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He grew up in Los Alamos, NM, the son of a physicist. With his own expertise in biophysics he developed a novel bench assay to inform the unique shape of the bili-hut light canopy and demonstrate its superiority to conventional phototherapy light sources.
Gary Gilbert, MD
Chief Operations Officer
Kenny Abriola
Vice President, Sales
Kenny has over 20 years of medical device executive sales experience with brands such as Aulisa Medical, O2 Concepts, Drager, Fukuda Denshi and Spacelabs. He joins LST to lead the development of our sales team, grow new channels for the business and bring the bili-hut and our other products broader visibility both nationally and globally.
Kenny Abriola
Vice President of Sales
Stephanie is an innovative physician leader and executive with a unique complement of expertise, including Pediatric Critical Care, enterprise education and training, immersive learning strategies (Simulation, Virtual Reality), quality and safety science, high reliability, human factors engineering, user centered design, medical device industry, emerging technologies, virtual care models and change management. Her work at Little Sparrows is largely focused on examining the intersection of people, work, physical environments, and Little Sparrows’ innovative technologies to understand how those interactions can optimize outcomes for patients and caregivers.
Stephanie Sudikoff, MD MHA
Chief Medical Officer
Mark joined Little Sparrows in 2023 as the VP of Quality and Regulatory Affairs. He holds a Ph.D. in Mathematical Statistics and Probability and Master's degrees in Engineering Mathematics and Stochastic Control, using this expertise to apply data-driven, risk-based strategies across the product life cycle (from design to PMS with actionable feedback). For over 20 years he has worked in the startup ecosystem to simplify compliance, reduce costs, and improve quality for various class II and III devices, including drug-device combo, infusion, respiratory, and cardiovascular devices, as well as IVD and SaMD. He has led and managed engineering, QA/RA, and supply chain functions, prepared and submitted multiple regulatory filings, and contributed to the successful acquisition of three medical device companies. Fluent in 4 languages, Mark brings extensive knowledge and experience in US and global regulatory affairs to advance our mission to improve the care of newborns worldwide.
Mark Shal, PhD
Vice President of Quality and Regulatory Affairs
Advisory Board
Little Sparrows Technologies is proud to work with an Advisory Board whose interests and expertise transcend ordinary boundaries.
Charles F. McMillan, PhD has more than 35 years of scientific and leadership experience. He is a frequent speaker on the vital role of national laboratories for the nation, and the importance of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education in cultivating the talent necessary to sustaining that role in the future. His interests are global as well as domestic, demonstrated by extensive travel and volunteer work for projects in sub-Saharan Africa.
Dr. McMillan served as Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory and President of Los Alamos National Security, LLC from June 2011 to December 2017, overseeing an annual operating budget of approximately $2.5 billion, roughly 1100 employees and a nearly 40 square-mile site featuring some of the most specialized scientific equipment and supporting infrastructure in the world. The Laboratory is a principal contributor to the US Department of Energy to maintain the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile.
Dr. McMillan guided Los Alamos through continuing high levels of mission execution, and under his leadership the Laboratory continued to innovate new techniques, including novel systems that provide exponential improvements in data-gathering. He holds a doctorate in physics from MIT and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Washington Adventist Academy.
Jim Miller, JD is the co-founder of two medical device companies, one leading to an IPO and the other to a successful acquisition. He has served as a Senior Advisor to USAID, participated in founding Private Capital Group-Africa (PCGA) to encourage innovative partnerships between private capital and local enterprise in sub-Saharan Africa. He has also served as Chief Global Mentor at the MassChallenge accelerator. He is currently an Executive-in-Residence to Partners Healthcare Office of Innovation and serves as Director of Springboard Studio, a clinician innovation accelerator at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Mr. Miller received his undergraduate degree from Middlebury College and law degree from Boston University. He is a serial entrepreneur, starting his first enterprise as a college student. He has co-founded two national retail chains (Bertucci’s and FiRE+iCE Restaurants) and subsequently two medical device enterprises, all of which resulted in successful exits including 3 IPOs.
Jack Szostak, PhD is biochemist who is broadly interested in details of science and technology and the ways in which they can enhance human well-being. During the 1980s Dr. Szostak carried out research on the genetics and biochemistry of DNA recombination, which led to the double-strand-break repair model for meiotic recombination. At the same time Dr. Szostak made fundamental contributions to our understanding of telomere structure and function, and the role of telomere maintenance in preventing cellular senescence. For this work Dr. Szostak shared, with Drs. Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider, the 2006 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award and the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
In the 1990s Dr. Szostak developed in vitro selection as a tool for the isolation of functional RNA, DNA and protein molecules from large pools of random sequences. His laboratory used in vitro selection and directed evolution to isolate and characterize numerous nucleic acid sequences with specific ligand binding and catalytic properties. From 2000 until the present Dr. Szostak’s research interests have focused on the laboratory synthesis of self-replicating systems and the origin of life.
He received his B.Sc. from McGill University in Montreal in 1972, and his Ph.D. from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, in 1977. Dr. Szostak is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, and the Alex Rich Distinguished Investigator in the Dept. of Molecular Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Muhammad Hamid Zaman, PhD is Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor of Biomedical Engineering and International Health at Boston University. Prof. Zaman’s research is focused on developing robust technologies and systems level solutions to improve the quality of medicines, particularly as they are related to mortality and morbidity associated with anti-microbial resistance. Scientific American has named technologies from the Zaman lab among the top 10 that will change the world. Professor Zaman is also part of the advisory committee for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal implementation in his native Pakistan, working with both public and the private sectors.
His latest book, Bitter Pills (Oxford University Press, 2018), looks at the global challenge of substandard and counterfeit drugs and the need for integrated solutions, ranging from innovation and technology to public health and regulation, to address the global crisis in the prevalence of substandard drugs and how they relate to global anti-microbial resistance challenges. His book also looks at the role of the private sector in developing innovation and creating an equitable platform for innovation development.
In addition, his newspaper columns have appeared in newspapers around the world, including the New York Times, Houston Chronicle and US News and World Report. He is a regular contributor on issues of drug quality and global health for the Project Syndicate (his columns have appeared in newspapers in more than 30 countries in six different languages), Huffington Post and writes a weekly column on innovation in health and education for leading Pakistan daily, Express Tribune which is part of the International New York Times group.
