Our Team

Michael R. Jaff, D.O., Founder, Partner and Chair

Michael R. Jaff is Vice President, Clinical Affairs, Innovation and Technology - Peripheral Interventions at Boston Scientific. Dr. Jaff was formerly president of Newton-Wellesley Hospital (part of the Partners Healthcare system in Massachusetts). Prior to N-WH, he led the Fireman Vascular Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Jaff’s research has been published in more than 300 peer reviewed medical journals. Jaff is also the founder of VasCore, which is the world’s largest core laboratory for non-invasive vascular imaging and clinical trials.

Dr. Jaff believes physician-industry collaborations have been critical to the advancement of patient care. He is an active clinical consultant in all aspects of vascular medicine, including peripheral arterial disease, venous thromboembolic disease, aneurysmal diseases and diagnostic strategies.

While attending to the rigors of clinical practice, administrative responsibilities, research and scientific publications, Dr. Jaff found understanding the evolving laws, regulations and conflicts of interest rules regarding physician-industry collaborations to be intensely challenging. Further, in discussing these issues with his colleagues, he found many physicians shared the same concerns along with a desire to find support in maintaining these relationships. Primacea was conceived to provide physicians with a comprehensive solution to the legal and business issues surrounding physician-industry collaborations, while maintaining the highest ethical standards.

Dr. Jaff is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, American College of Cardiology, and American Heart Association. He received an honorary Doctorate of Science from A.T. Still University School of Medicine.

Steven J. Cagnetta, Esq., Founder, Partner and Chief Counsel

Cagnetta has been an attorney for nearly 20 years. For the past 15 years his practice has focused on representing emerging companies and individuals in the high tech and medical device industries. Initially, Cagnetta provided these services through traditional law firms, where he focused on transactional matters such as capital financing, mergers and acquisitions and public offerings.

In 2003, Cagnetta co-founded Company Counsel where he employed a novel business structure to advising emerging companies and entrepreneurs with a deeper, more individualized focus. During this time, he worked with physicians in their industry collaborations and came to see firsthand the difficulties involved in trying to manage these relationships in an increasingly complicated regulatory environment. He also realized that the issues required a more holistic solution than a law firm could provide, which eventually led to the founding of Primacea.

Prior to founding Company Counsel, Cagnetta practiced at Hutchins, Wheeler & Dittmar in Boston. Before entering private practice, Cagnetta was a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps.

Cagnetta has been an invited speaker on numerous panels regarding physician-industry relations. He has also been a speaker at numerous events focusing on venture capital and start-up issues. He co-authors the Physician Counsel column in Endovascular Today .

From 2008 to 2013, Cagnetta served as Chair of the Board of Trustees for a charter school that employed expeditionary learning principals to teach middle school students. He currently serves as Chair of the Board of Directors for the school’s foundation.

Cagnetta received his Juris Doctor from Boston University and his Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude, from Muhlenberg College. He served as an editor of the Annual Review of Banking & Financial Law.

Cagnetta is admitted to the bar of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He has four patents pending.

Tom Cronin, Partner and Business Development

Tom Cronin has led Primacea’s work with Academic Medical Centers since 2016, and is one of the leading national experts on the Open Payments System as it relates to physicians and payment disputes. Prior to Primacea, Tom served as CEO of Neighborhood Diabetes, which provided diabetes products to clients throughout the eastern United States. Early in his career, he also served as a strategy consultant at Bain & Company in Boston.

Tom received his M.B.A. from MIT and his B.A. in Economics from Amherst College. Tom lives in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

Steven K. Ladd, Founder and Advisor

Steven Ladd is a serial entrepreneur with more than 25 years experience reinventing business and technology systems to simplify operations, save labor and improve user experiences.

Previously, Ladd was founder and CEO of Copanion, a venture-backed business that automated professional tax preparation with cloud-based software. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants endorsed the software as the accounting profession’s new standard for professional tax preparation and sold it to member firms (until Copanion was acquired by the industry vendor with the largest user base). Ladd’s testimony to the Internal Revenue Service on privacy issues related to offshore outsourcing resulted in the IRS issuing enhanced transparency regulations. He was named one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting for this work.

Ladd founded InterChip Systems, an electronics business that automated the miniaturization of electronics for the medical, consumer, computer and aerospace industries. He recruited DuPont and jointly formed a 55-firm industry alliance to standardize interfaces between component, materials and manufacturing firms. Ladd gave more than 60 invited and sponsored presentations and classes at industry, society, government and educational events. He led InterChip through its acquisition by Honeywell and became Vice President and General Manager of an electronics business unit.

Earlier, Ladd invented the world's first missless cache memory system and managed sales, marketing, manufacturing and engineering teams for technology businesses in Silicon Valley.

Ladd earned BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, where he developed and commercialized speech recognition technology with General Electric as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.

Ladd has four issued and 18 pending patents.