Board Bio

Board Value Proposition

Nick Halper is a clinical-stage medical device executive with a track record of building the regulatory, operational, and organizational infrastructure that takes high-risk medical devices from concept to first-in-human. As Chief Operating Officer of Motif Neurotech — a venture-backed company developing neurostimulation platform for psychiatric disorders — he has operated across every functional domain that determines whether an early-stage company survives: regulatory strategy, manufacturing quality, international expansion, financial modeling, and clinical trial infrastructure.

Nick brings boards a rare combination: the technical depth to interrogate regulatory and clinical risk, the financial fluency to stress-test funding scenarios, and the organizational instincts to assess whether a leadership team can execute. He is best suited to boards of clinical-stage medical device, neurotech, or digital health companies navigating FDA submission, first-in-human trials, Series A/B fundraising, or international regulatory expansion.

Areas of Expertise

Regulatory Submissions (US and International)

Has been lead author on over 30 successful regulatory submissions to the FDA for implantable medical devices and additional submissions in the Netherlands, Australia, Germany, and Canada. Motif Neurotech, where Nick served as COO and lead the first IDE submission, got approval in the first round, an unusually fast outcome compared to peer companies.

Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A)

Manages the whole company P&L for Motif Neurotech, a series A venture backed medical device company. Over the last two years, the company budget to actuals have had less than 1% deviation from the planned budget. Nick has authored multiple whole company budgets for venture backed medical device companies through seed and series A fundraising stages.

IT, QMS, and other Company Information Infrastructure

Has personally built or overseen the development of multiple quality management systems that have resulted in successful regulatory submissions for initial clinical trials. Served as a consultant for dozens of companies helping to establish the full stack of company information systems to get companies off the ground and right-sized for their current stage.

Company Operating Systems and Planning Structures

Developed a whole company business plan for Blackrock Neurotech that launched a new business (Contract engineering) and lead to 100% growth in the target market (clinical research systems). Developed Motif’s planning cadence and oversaw development of project management systems that resulted in Motif being the fastest active implantable neurotechnolgy company with a new tech stack to multi-patient clinical trials.

Professional Experience

Nick is currently the Chief Operating Officer of Motif Neurotech, Inc, a clinical stage medical device company developing a class three active implantable, and the director of its United Kingdom and Australian Subsidiaries. He has previously served as a cofounder and Chief Operating Officer of Braingrade, a venture-backed medical device company, CEO of Neuromatch, a global-scale nonprofit providing graduate level education and research programs in the computational sciences.

At Motif, Nick is the company treasurer and attends all board meetings. He plays a key role in board reporting, agenda construction, and facilitates operational board work such as equity operations (new grants, 409a, etc) and financial reporting and planning (scenario planning, financial and company operations reports, etc). At Neuromatch, he lead all board meetings, walking the team through strategic decisions, reporting company operations, and supporting board governance (new board member secession planning, etc). At Braingrade, he structured board-ready governance process as company approached Series A and prepared and led investor/advisor meetings in a board cadence.